Streaming VR Games to the Broad Audience: A Comparison of the First-Person and Third-Person Perspectives

The spectatorship experience for virtual reality (VR) games differs strongly from its non-VR precursor. When watching non-VR games on platforms such as Twitch, spectators just see what the player sees, as the physical interaction is mostly unimportant for the overall impression. In VR, the immersive full-body interaction is a crucial part of the player experience. Hence, content creators, such as streamers, often rely on green screens or similar solutions to offer a mixed-reality third-person view to disclose their full-body actions. Our work compares the most popular realizations of the first-person and the third-person perspective in an online survey (N = 217) with three different VR games. Contrary to the current trend to stream in third-person, our key result is that most viewers prefer the first-person version, which they attribute mostly to the better focus on in-game actions and higher involvement. Based on the study insights, we provide design recommendations for both perspectives.