A VR Stealth Game to improving hearing
E. Sebastian L.L.M.
Min Kwak
Pedro Sodre
Sid Chou
Mariette Papic
Chella Quint
Listening in complex situations can be challenging for anyone. Additionally 20% of people worldwide suffer from some sort of hearing loss, and stigma and shame can lead some people with hearing loss to self-isolate. We partnered with Northeastern researchers to create a VR game that shows how gamified sensorimotor interaction could be conducive to better assessment and improved hearing.
Together we designed Space Party Rescue, a VR stealth game with sensorimotor interaction, where you must navigate difficult listening situations during a spaceship party, and identify alien words between the sounds of the spaceship engine, music, and party-goers. The game was built to assess and exercise speech intelligibility in complex environments to learn about people’s hearing ability and attempt to improve it.
Features
With the intention to improve hearing assessment tests and to create a tool to improve hearing, we designed narrative and core set of game mechanics:
- Choose a group to listen in to figure out which speaker is the alien.
- Use special powers to manipulate different sounds making it easier to understand the target.
- Give feedback about your experience to see how hearing ability improves, enjoyment, usability, and the impacts of the interaction after repeated practice.
- Rescue hidden aliens you identify amongst the party goers
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
Game Design
We designed the core interaction to utilize spatial audio, which would create the sensorimotor interaction we wanted. When you leaned into a conversation or object making sound, it would get quieter and louder based on distance. Each area had varying levels of difficulty, based on the number of "distractor" sound there were.
