Year: 2024
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: This paper presents Road to Acceptance, a gamified virtual reality (VR) experience that brings awareness about the five stages of grief through a fantasy narrative.Grief, a universal human experience, manifests in five stages outlined by Kübler-Ross and Kessler (2005): Denial, Anger, Bargain, Depression, and Acceptance.These stages characterize the emotional journey faced by those grappling with loss, whether it be the passing of a close friend, family member, or loved one.Virtual Reality (VR) holds promise as a unique medium for fostering narrative innovation in socio-emotional learning applications (Bailenson 2018, Mado et al. 2020, Rueda and Lara 2020).It can enable users to actively step into someone else's perspective, contemplating their emotions, beliefs, and experiences, often referred to as "Virtual Reality Perspective Taking" (VRPT) (Mado et al. 2020, Rueda and Lara 2020).In this context, VRPT serves as a powerful pedagogical tool to shed light on the complexities of grief, offering valuable insights into the diverse emotional paths individuals may traverse.The use of VRPT enables players to embody and respond to other person's actions and words while considering their character's values and desires, making it primarily a cognitive form of empathy (Rueda and Lara 2020).While grief is an inevitable reality for all, understanding its depth and impact is often hindered by societal taboos.Gamified environments can effectively promote additional, informal resources for learning and destigmatizing grief.For instance, Roth et al. (2019) developed a VR experience titled 5Days to convey the intricacies of
Authors: Thais Alvarenga, Amina Kobenova
Institution: University of California, Santa Cruz
Language: English
Subfield: Human-Computer Interaction
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4413398290