This study examines how different roles and background knowledge transform players’ dyadic conversations into spatial dialogues in a virtual cellular biology game. Cellverse is a collaborative virtual reality (VR) game designed to teach cell biology. Players work in pairs, assuming the role of either a Navigator, with reference material and a global view through a tablet, or an Explorer, with a more detailed interactive view of the cell through a VR headset and hand controllers. The game is designed so players must collaborate in order to complete the game. Our results show that roles influenced their reference perspectives at a level of statistical significance. Furthermore, players with high prior knowledge tried to reduce their partner’s mental effort by giving spatial information from their point of view, thus producing fewer occurrences of spatial unawareness. Results of this study suggest that designers can build in different roles and leverage different background knowledge to prompt effective partnerships during collaborative games.

中文翻译：

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通过协作解决问题游戏中的空间对话分析探索角色和背景如何产生影响

这项研究探讨了在虚拟细胞生物学游戏中，不同的角色和背景知识如何将玩家的二元对话转化为空间对话。Cellverse是一款旨在教授细胞生物学的协作虚拟现实（VR）游戏。玩家可以成对工作，既可以扮演导航员的角色，也可以通过平板电脑使用参考资料和全局视图，或者可以通过VR头戴式耳机和手动控制器使用资源管理器（通过资源管理器获得更详细的交互式视图）。游戏经过精心设计，因此玩家必须合作才能完成游戏。我们的结果表明，角色在统计学意义上影响了他们的参考观点。此外，具有较高先验知识的玩家试图通过从自己的角度提供空间信息来减少其伴侣的精神努力，因此产生较少的空间无意识事件。这项研究的结果表明，设计师可以在协作游戏中扮演不同的角色，并利用不同的背景知识来促进有效的伙伴关系。