Premise

A virtual reality experience to create awareness of dangers around water for young men.

Synopsis

A beach is a dangerous place for risky behavior. Despite that, many young men become involved in drownings through peer pressure. That pressure forces men into a situation where they have to prove their masculinity. Therefore, they are more likely to underestimate the danger and overestimate their swimming ability. So, one should create awareness about this dangerous behavior. A promising solution to create awareness about dangerous situations is virtual reality. Virtual reality creates a world where people can experience hazards without being in danger. Then they know what to do the next time. In this research, I will develop a virtual reality experience that lets men experience peer pressure and the consequences of risky behavior.

Substantiation

Problem statement

Beaches are dangerous areas where people can drown. The water is an unexpected ‘entity’ that can surprise swimmers and beachgoers with unexpected events. But something about the drowning incidents sticks out. Many young men aged 18-25 are victims of drowning deaths (Moran, 2011). Research indicates that young men frequently underestimate the danger and overestimate their swimming ability (Howland et al., 1996). Peers push one another, particularly in groups, to display their masculinity (Moran, 2011). They expect others to impress through risky actions, such as swimming outside the patrolled beach, swimming alone, or ignoring beach flags.

Moreover, the projection motivation theory can be used to explain risky behavior (McCool et al., 2009). That theory is separated into threat and coping appraisal. The threat appraisal is the feeling that you can get in danger. On the other hand, the coping appraisal is the feeling that a person can handle a hazardous situation. The combination of the appraisals will lead to action. So, peers expect others to prove that they are not afraid and have the capabilities to handle a dangerous situation.

Virtual reality

The goal is to bring awareness about safety and prevent risky behaviors at the beaches. Therefore virtual reality (VR) is a good solution to experiencing a dangerous situation in a safe environment. According to Araiza-Alba et al. (2021), virtual reality can help people feel more connected to the real world and better understand the situation. Furthermore, exposing them to certain stimuli can help against psychological issues (Botella et al., 2017).

A good VR experience is created by three pillars: telepresence, immersion, and interaction (Mütterlein, 2018). Telepresence is the sensation of being in another world, whereas immersion is the feeling of being sucked into the virtual world. Lastly, interaction creates a feeling of control over the world. By measuring these three pillars, we can define the strengths and weaknesses of the VR experience.

Prototype:

Philippe et al. (2020) argued that a serious game-like virtual reality experience could teach people social skills like how to act in specific circumstances. So I want to create a prototype where the player interacts with non-player characters (NPC) who pressure the player to do something dangerous. The player engages in a dialogue with the NPCs, which are the player’s friends. They try to pursue the player to swim alone to a rock in the sea. After the dialogue, the player can choose to swim or not. If they decide to swim, they get exhausted and eventually drown.

Tool:

The experience is created in the unreal engine using an oculus rift head mount display (HDM). The benefits of the unreal engine are a VR template that instantly works. And visual blueprint scripting makes it easy and fast to develop.

Iteration 1:

The first iteration consists of two parts: a start creating the environment and a focus group on peer pressure. The goal of the focus group was to find out how to pressure others. These insights will be used to create the dialogue. Dialogue is an essential part. It has to be convincing and realistic to work. The players need to feel the consequences of their actions through the pressure. Beforehand, I did some literature research to find some information about peer pressure to use in the focus group as examples. I asked the participants how they would pressure someone and how someone could pressure them. Furthermore, the environment created in the unreal engine assists in sketching the picture.

Insights:

• People who are sensitive to peer pressure often have low self-worth and high expectations from others. (Lebedina-Manzoni & Ricijaš, 2013)
• People like to mimic a friend with high status to feel more similar to that friend. (Laursen & Faur, 2022)
• Rewards can be a convincing factor to give more pressure. For instance, ‘I give you 30 euros if you do this’.
• Repetition is important. If you keep saying something, the other will start to believe it.
• Make rejection feel less desirable. For instance, compare the person to something terrible.

Iteration 2

This iteration worked without a Head Mount Display (HDM) to make it faster to develop and test. The environment was a beach with three NPCs standing in a triangle. The player could only talk to the front guy. The insights from the focus group were implemented in the dialogue. The pressure started slightly and built up. Furthermore, the gameplay included quest, checkpoint, and drown condition. The game also used sound to make it more immersive. For instance, ambient sound of waves or certain sound cues, such as a swimming sound. That latter was used to indicate fatigue and panic, which got faster over time.

The experiences were tested on the target audience. They were told that they were on the beach and their friends wanted to talk to them. The participants had to play and answer some questions about the persuasion of the dialogue. They had to rate the three pillars of VR between 1 and 10. Overall the participants felt the pressure. The NPC keeps asking to do the challenge. On the other hand, they thought it would be more convincing if the other two other NPCs also talked. Furthermore, the telepresence and the immersion on the beach were good. However, the lack of in-game explanation assured me that I needed to assist with some things. And that broke some of the immersion and interaction. Also, they thought the death felt random. They did not notice any cues that explained fatigue and panic during swimming.

Iteration 3

In the final iteration, I changed some things according to the feedback. Firstly, I changed the dialogue to involve the other two NPCs. The front guy still leads the conversation, but the other two NPCs add to or speak against the main guy. And the dialogue ends with repeating the question to accept the challenge. But even if the player rejects the challenge in the end. The players have to do the challenge. Otherwise, he is not welcome anymore.
Furthermore, some UI elements were added to guide the player. And more cues, such as a panting sound and fading screen, are added to make the player clear that he is tired of swimming.

The experience was again tested on the target group, but his time using an HDM. I again used the same questions as the previous test to evaluate the experience. The improvement through the UI was effective. The participants understood better what they had to do. They almost did not need any instructions beforehand. They thought the conversation with the NPCs was pressuring, belittling, and provoking. According to some participants, the NPCs didn’t feel like friends and were sometimes slightly too toxic. However, everyone went swimming anyway, even the participants that rejected the challenge.

Conclusion

This virtual reality experience aims to increase awareness of risky behavior on beaches. Masculinity and peer pressure push young men into these dangerous behaviors. Through testing, I created a dialogue, between the users and persevering friends, to force the users into risky behavior. In the end, the dialogue was convincing, but the conversation was sometimes too mean. It was all against one. In future iterations, some of the NPCs should be more friendly. In that way, the group may feel more like friends. Furthermore, the impact of the user’s choice could be more. The dialogue can follow a different path based on choices, but the end result is the same. Therefore everyone went swimming anyway. In the next iteration, the choices could slightly alter the story, such as an NPC going swimming as an example. So the users have more control over their actions.

References

Araiza-Alba, P., Keane, T., Matthews, B. L., Simpson, K., Strugnell, G., Chen, W. S., & Kaufman, J. (2021). The potential of 360-degree virtual reality videos to teach water-safety skills to children. Computers & Education, 163, 104096. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2020.104096

Botella, C., Fernández-Álvarez, J., Guillén, V., García-Palacios, A., & Baños, R. M. (2017). Recent Progress in Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy for Phobias: A Systematic Review. Current Psychiatry Reports, 19(7). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-017-0788-4

Howland, J. C., Hingson, R., Mangione, T. W., Bell, N., & Bak, S. M. (1996). Why are most drowning victims men? Sex differences in aquatic skills and behaviors. American Journal of Public Health, 86(1), 93–96. https://doi.org/10.2105/ajph.86.1.93

Laursen, B., & Faur, S. (2022). What does it mean to be susceptible to influence? A brief primer on peer conformity and developmental changes that affect it. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 46(3), 222–237. https://doi.org/10.1177/01650254221084103

Lebedina-Manzoni, M., & Ricijaš, N. (2013). CHARACTERISTICS OF YOUTH REGARDING SUSCEPTIBILITY TO PEER PRESSURE. Kriminologija & Socijalna Integracija : Časopis Za Kriminologiju, Penologiju I Poremećaje U Ponašanju, 21(1), 39–48. https://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/651200.HR_Lebedina_Ricijas.pdf

McCool, J., Ameratunga, S., Moran, K., & Robinson, E. (2009). Taking a Risk Perception Approach to Improving Beach Swimming Safety. International Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 16(4), 360–366. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-009-9042-8

Moran, K. (2011). (Young) Men behaving badly: dangerous masculinities and risk of drowning in aquatic leisure activities. Annals of Leisure Research, 14(2–3), 260–272. https://doi.org/10.1080/11745398.2011.615719

Mütterlein, J. (2018). The Three Pillars of Virtual Reality? Investigating the Roles of Immersion, Presence, and Interactivity. Proceedings of the . . . Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. https://doi.org/10.24251/hicss.2018.174

Philippe, S., Souchet, A. D., Lameras, P., Petridis, P., Caporal, J., Coldeboeuf, G., & Duzan, H. (2020). Multimodal teaching, learning and training in virtual reality: a review and case study. Virtual Reality & Intelligent Hardware, 2(5), 421–442. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vrih.2020.07.008

Used assets

“Beach boy Chencho” by MadKoko CC BY 4.0

“Lifeguard hut” by Daniel Skomorovsky CC BY 4.0

“Beach Chair” by Po CC BY 4.0

“Beach umbrella asset” by Beewee CC BY-NC 4.0

“Panting.wav” by Tats14 CC BY-NC 3.0

“swimming loop.wav” by Robinhood76 CC BY-NC 4.0

Ambient sound obtained from https://www.zapsplat.com