“You Better Eat to Survive”: exploring cooperative eating in virtual reality games

“You Better Eat to Survive” is a two-player virtual reality game that involves eating real food to survive and ultimately escape from a virtual island. We sense eating actions of players by analyzing chewing sounds captured by a low-cost microphone attached to the players' cheek. Our interest in using cooperative eating as a way of interacting in virtual reality is driven by the possibilities of creating a cross-modal gameplay experience that benefits social interactions. A user study with 22 players showed that eating real food improved players' feeling of presence, challenged trust dependencies and made the survival aspect of the game feel more “real”. We use these insights to articulate three design themes that can guide designers in creating virtual reality games that incorporate cooperative eating. Ultimately, our work aims to guide design thinking towards using underexplored interaction methods in virtual reality games, thereby reiterating the post-digital design theme of TEI 2018.