Entangled

2019
virtual reality game

tiltfactor.org

The Story | Game Play | Research

The Story

Congratulations! You, Dr. Alex Smith, have conducted groundbreaking work in the field of teleportation. Your work is renowned in the scientific community and has far-reaching implications for the future of humanity. The future looks bright, until one day something seems to go wrong in the lab…

Entangled is a Virtual Reality puzzle game, in which players take on the role of the scientist Dr. Smith and attempt to escape the consequences of interdimensional meddling.

Game Play

A deadly disease has broken out in your neighborhood, and it’s your job to halt its spread! Work with your fellow players to contain infections by vaccinating and curing people.

The game is won when the disease can no longer spread to infect others, no matter which direction it spreads.

The game is lost if five people die OR if all infection chips have been played.

Research

Prior research in non-VR narratives has shown that readers connect to a character less when that character belongs to a different out-group (ie. gender, sexuality, race, etc.) than them. However, when these differences are revealed later in the narrative instead of at the beginning, research has shown that reader’s empathy towards that different out-group increases. Tiltfactor was interested in studying whether or not this is true for VR (Virtual Reality) narratives and if the nature of VR makes the effect stronger.

In particular, Entangled aims to study whether VR narratives can reduce male participants’ biases towards women in science by having participants play as a woman scientist, whose gender is not explicitly revealed until later in the game. Over the course of solving the puzzles in Entangled, the player eventually sees a reflection of their avatar. At this point, it is revealed to the player that Dr. Alex Smith, the character they are playing as, is a woman. Tiltfactor then studied how differences in when the avatar’s gender was revealed effected participant’s attitudes towards women in science.