City knights: Spatial realism and memorability of virtual game scenes in pervasive gameplay

Realistic 3D city models are gaining popularity and becoming increasingly available. Correspondingly, pervasive games such as Pokemon GO are becoming widely popular. The use of realistic virtual environments in serious applications has been studied from the point of view of spatial memorability, yet the use of realistic virtual environments in the context of pervasive location based games is still unexplored. We assess the impact of spatial realism on the memorability of virtual environments in pervasive gameplay with a pervasive role-playing game City Knights. We conducted a field trial with 13 participants involving virtual environments of three locations having varying levels of spatial similarity with the real world. Our findings indicate that spatial similarity is one of the qualities affecting the memorability of virtual environments. We suggest that this knowledge can be exploited in designing smoother transitions between virtual and physical environments in pervasive games.