Embodied, in-medium design of VR game motion controls using interactive supervised learning

In recent years, motion controls have become a prevalent input modality for virtual reality (VR) games, offering players richer ways to interact with virtual environments. However, designing nuanced motion controls remains a challenging task for game creators. Interactive machine learning (IML) has been proposed as a solution to better support the iterative embodied process of movement interaction design. However, its application to VR game motion control design poses unique challenges. The goal of this thesis is to investigate the role of a novel IML design process and tool for VR embodied motion control design that addresses these challenges and supports game creators in their design process.

To achieve this goal, we first investigate considerations for integrating IML into game development pipelines, focusing on seamless integration with game engines. We then propose a novel IML process and tool, InteractML, that addresses these challenges, offering native in-engine integration.

We investigate the embodied design process with two studies involving game creators designing motion controls for VR games throughout ideation, implementation and evaluation. Results show that in-medium, embodied interaction design with IML enables game creators to bodily explore, prototype, and evaluate VR movement interactions with richer nuance. We find that designing for VR is better done in VR, that there is a social embodied cognitive dimension to embodied interaction design, and that there exists a dissonance between the creator's first-person embodied understanding of movement and the machine's third-person computational representation of movement.

In conclusion, this thesis presents a contribution to the field of VR game motion control design, embodied interaction design and human-centred IML. Our work has the potential improve the richness of motion control design in VR games and to inspire further work in the broader area of IML for creative applications.