What is it about?
Virtual Reality (VR) developers create experiences that result in gender dysphoria and euphoria for Transgender and Genderqueer individuals. The ability to create an avatar can impact how positive or negative these impacts can be. After surveying 29 and interviewing 7 individuals, we developed a set of design guidelines to help VR designers and developers create euphoric and affirming experiences for Transgender and Genderqueer folks through avatar creation tools.
Featured Image
Photo by julien Tromeur on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Our findings show that Trans and Genderqueer individuals are more likely to have gender affirming experiences in VR when they can create avatars with greater gender diversity, gender neutrality, and the ability to further customize their avatars with other tools. To reduce negative experiences, designers should allow for greater voice and pronoun options. Lastly, providing players with the opportunities to experience mundane and gender affirming situations in game can become euphoria inducing and dysphoria relieving especially when paired with a customized avatar.
Perspectives
I hope this article's discussion helps designers and developers understand how to use VR's affordances to affirm and validate a player’s gender, support their flow, enforce their sense of presence, and ensure their right to self-representation.
Joshua Fisher
Ball State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Impacts of Virtual Reality Avatar Creation and Embodiment on Transgender and Genderqueer Individuals in Games, September 2022, ACM (Association for Computing Machinery),
DOI: 10.1145/3555858.3555882.
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