On the Plane: A Roleplaying Game for Simulating Ingroup-Outgroup Biases in Virtual Reality

Many conflicts emanate from failure to understand others’ perspectives. Computationally supported roleplaying games have the potential to promote successful perspective taking. When implemented with the affordances of virtual reality, nuances of embodied communication in roleplaying can be more robustly modeled. In this paper, we describe the design and development of a roleplaying game aimed at simulating ingroup-outgroup biases with the goal of supporting positive perspective taking in virtual reality: On the Plane. The game presents players with a simulation of air travel experience, from airport security screening to in-flight events. On the Plane affords the ability to experience the simulation as different characters, supporting both ingroup and outgroup perspectives. We describe how the game is structured to simulate and challenge ingroupoutgroup biases within the context of xenophobia and lay out our plans for future research using On the Plane to promote positive perspective transformation (e.g., challenging one’s own ill-founded preconceptions).