Wizard Gauntlets Adventure: Appraising the Cognitive Load in Gesture-based Environment

Abstract

Wizard Gauntlets Adventure is a fantasy RPG game with unique glove shaped controllers. Our adventure begins when a small town is terrorised by an evil dragon. The player discovers magical wizard gauntlets that grant them special powers. These give the player the option to join either the light or dark side based on ethical decisions they make in the game. On their adventure, they face multiple enemies they must defeat in order to progress. The player must use fast and precise gestures to strike these foes. Two core mechanics of many videogames, especially ones that use tangible interaction, are immersion and cognitive load. This is because when playing videogames, the player wants to escape reality for a bit without being too overburdened that it takes them out of this world. With our game, we investigate the consequences different hand gestures have on these two mechanics. It is our goal to see whether these specific gestures add to the immersion and if some of these would not be too complex for the user’s cognitive capacity.