Presence Experience in Mobile Gaming

A controlled experiment compared presence experienced while playing a rally game on a large PC screen versus a small PDA screen, asking whether mobile gaming is as immersive as PC gaming. Fifty volunteers (33 women, 17 men, mean age 27) played for about five minutes after a short practice session, and presence was measured with the MEC Spatial Presence Questionnaire, with individual differences assessed through Witmer and Singer's Immersive Tendencies Questionnaire. The study hypothesized that participants would feel more present on the larger display and that individual immersive tendencies would mediate this relationship.

The results showed that participants experienced significantly higher presence on the PC. Spatial situation model scores were higher for PC players (3.31 versus 2.73), as were possible-actions and self-location scores (3.28 versus 2.25 and 3.40 versus 2.10, respectively), all statistically significant. Attentional engagement, however, did not differ between conditions, and was in fact marginally higher for the PDA group (4.23 versus 4.20). Suspension of disbelief and involvement showed no significant device effect, though involvement approached significance. The authors interpret this as evidence that attention is necessary but not sufficient for presence, so that small-screen players can be highly engaged without feeling spatially immersed.

User characteristics significantly moderated these effects. Domain-specific interest, focus, involvement, and frequency of game play each interacted with device type in predicting presence dimensions, with highly focused or motor-sport-interested players more strongly affected by the small screen's limitations, while less focused players showed the reverse pattern. The study is limited by its small, single-game sample and short sessions, and the authors suggest that improved multimodal interfaces and high-quality sound may help mobile games become more immersive.