Enjoying My Time in the Animus: A Quantitative Survey on Perceived Realism and Enjoyment of Historical Video Games

Abstract

This study investigates players’ perceived realism of historical video games. Perceived realism is understood as a multidimensional concept, going beyond the more traditional use of ‘realism’ in historical game studies, where it often refers to the plausibility or accuracy of historical reconstructions. The study further examines how perceived realism relates to players’ enjoyment of historical games. Specifically, this study analyses Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed Unity and Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Through an online survey among 1,317 respondents, this study found that the five-dimensional structure of perceived realism holds for historical games. The three games differed in their perceptions of social realism, perceptual pervasiveness, freedom of choice and enjoyment. Finally, perceptual pervasiveness and character involvement were identified as strong predictors of enjoyment in historical games. This study contributes towards further validation of the perceived realism scale across game genres and pleads for a systematic use of the multidimensional term ‘realism’ in historical game research.

Animating a Plausible Past: Perceived Realism and Sense of Place Influence Entertainment of and Tourism Intentions From Historical Video Games

“…Shifting to appreciation, both freedom of choice and simulational realism predicted appreciation scores for all four games. This finding was surprising, given that both were associated with enjoyment in Vandewalle et al (2022). One argument for this finding is that both freedom of choice and simulational realism focus on what the player can do within a historical video game-allowing the player to reenact and influence history while they play (see Chapman, 2016; and thus, feel a deeper emotional connection with those experiences (Daneels, Malliet et al, 2021) Connecting these findings to sense of place, it is possible that players enjoy historical games when those games are able to provide impressive and detailed places to connect with (especially relevant for recreating ancient history in video games, to help "close the gaps" for players entering the atmosphere of antiquity), and they appreciate historical games when they are able to freely move through and directly experience and test those places (especially relevant for recreating modern history in video games, to help reimagine otherwise recognizable spaces for players).…”

“…Ribbens et al (2016) proposed a multidimensional approach to examine how players perceive a game as realistic, consisting of five dimensions: social realism (the degree to which game characters and events resemble reallife people and occurrences), perceptual pervasiveness (the degree to which games create a compelling audiovisual illusion), character involvement (the degree to which players feel engaged with the game world through a close connection with their character), freedom of choice (the degree to which in-game choices resemble real-life choices) and simulational realism (the degree to which in-game behavior resembles real-life behavior through a game's preprogrammed set of rules). These dimensions have been useful for understanding player experiences with different types of shooting games (e.g., fantasy-and military-themed shooters; Daneels et al, 2018;Ribbens & Malliet, 2010;Ribbens et al, 2016) and action-adventure games situated in historical locations and periods (Alcindor et al, 2022;Vandewalle et al, 2022).…”

“…Creed series is one of the most popular series of historical games (as previously noted). Second, the Assassin's Creed games present graphically lavish and highly detailed reconstructions of history, facilitating increased perceived realism (Vandewalle et al, 2022) and, potentially, sense of place. Third, the series has a large fan following (e.g., fan artists, podcasts, and active online communities) that often discusses their game experiences (relevant for survey research).…”

“…Unexpectedly, social realism had no main association with appreciation for any of the games used in this study. One reason for this could be found in Vandewalle et al (2022), in which Assassin's Creed players felt that some of the game worlds (especially in the open-world format games based in antiquity) were generally repetitive, sometimes recycling assets that were obvious to players (repeating scenery or structures, etc.). Another study that focused on Assassin's Creed Odyssey (in comparison to other games, see Daneels, Malliet et al, 2021) found that the game's "level-grinding" mechanics (in which players are required to engage in smaller tasks to progress a game) are likely barriers to emotional engagement necessary for appreciation to form.…”

“…Perceived game realism. An adapted perceived realism scale for historical games byVandewalle et al (2022) was used (which adapted the scale byRibbens et al, 2016). The scale consisted of five dimensions: social realism (3 items, M = 5.23, SD = 1.06, ω = .759), character involvement (4 items, M = 5.24, SD = 1.11, ω = .882), perceptual pervasiveness (3 items, M = 5.51, SD = 1.07, ω = .757), freedom of choice (5 items, M =4.96, SD = 1.23, ω = .867), and simulational realism (5 items, M = 4.40, SD = 1.60, ω = .925).Sense of place.…”