Research Trends in Immersive Technology in the Field of Entertainment or Games by Bibliometric Analysis

In the realm of immersive technology research, traditional systematic reviews have focused on the areas of education and training, healthcare, and tourism experiences. However, the investigation of trends and the utilization of immersive technology in the fields of entertainment and gaming has been relatively overlooked. As such, this study seeks to fill this research gap by using bibliometric analysis to explore the clustering of research topics related to Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Extended Reality (XR) within the entertainment and gaming sectors. We identified nine groups, and through manual inspection, immersive research topics within the realm of entertainment and gaming were eventually categorized into eight principal research trend topics: “User Game Experience in Virtual Reality Environments”, “Motion Sickness in Immersive Virtual Reality”, “Designing Safe Training Environments in Immersive Virtual Reality”, “Applications of Limb and Cognitive Rehabilitation in Immersive Virtual Reality”, “Opportunities and Challenges in the Metaverse and Blockchain”, “Virtual Reality Simulation Training in Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Patient Resuscitation Skills for Medical Professionals”, “Human-Robot Interaction in Virtual Reality” and “Education and Learning through Augmented Reality”. By providing these topic clusters, we aim to provide researchers with a valuable direction for future research. Additionally, we engage in an exploration of the technologies and scenarios employed within these topic groups to further enhance our understanding of the gaps.