The Impact of Co-Located Play on Social Presence and Game Experience in a VR Game

A study of 34 participants playing a two-player VR game, Little VR Pet Shop, examined whether co-located play in the same room produces a different social and experiential outcome than play across separate rooms connected by intercom. The central question was whether physical proximity contributes meaningfully to social presence and game experience in virtual reality, and whether separated players can achieve comparable social connection. Participants were friend pairs, and the research used a within-subjects design measured with the Game Experience Questionnaire (GEQ), analyzed through Bayesian paired t-tests.

The findings point consistently toward no meaningful difference between conditions. Bayesian evidence ranged from moderate to anecdotal in favor of the null hypothesis, with Bayes factors mostly below 0.33, and no significant differences emerged across GEQ core dimensions, social presence components, or self-reported enjoyment. Most players expressed no preference between the two settings, and 94.1 percent indicated willingness to play again, suggesting that separated play was experienced as satisfying as shared-room play.

The authors propose three explanations for this absence of a co-location effect: the head-mounted display itself may isolate players in a way that equalizes conditions, the high degree of incorporation VR induces may make presence largely independent of physical proximity, and voice communication may serve as the primary driver of social presence regardless of location. These accounts remain untested, and the authors identify several limitations, including reliance on a single game, a simulated rather than real separation between players who already knew each other, and an unpublished validation of the GEQ instrument.

The study's scope is a single VR game and a small, friend-based sample, so its conclusions are necessarily exploratory. Its practical implication is that designers of online multi-user VR experiences may be able to build meaningful social interaction without requiring players to share a physical space, a hypothesis the authors plan to test across additional games and player configurations.