Serious virtual reality game - ArcadeVR

Abstract

Covid-19 has caused the change of lifestyles and lack of social interaction to induce more stress than before. With the government enforcing lockdowns and strict measures to minimise the spread of the virus, more people are turning to online gaming as a form of social stress reliever. Virtual reality gaming has become more popular over the years and is still increasing. The usefulness of VR on our mental health and consideration strategies has been discussed in this project for a more impactful VR game experience. The implementation, ArcadeVR, aims to recreate a physical arcade environment in Virtual reality for people to socialise with their friends through online interaction to help reduce stress and promote better overall mental health. This VR game is developed for the oculus quest 2 and oculus rift using the unity game engine, photon multiplayer engine and blender. At the end of the project, a user testing survey is done to assess how ArcadeVR benefited the user as a stress reliever.