Investigation of Sentiments in Virtual Reality Game Reviews

This study investigates the sentiments and emotions of users that they expressed in virtual reality game reviews to understand their experience and emotional responses associated with virtual reality gaming. For this, 1,635,919 textual reviews of virtual reality games were scraped from the Steam digital video game distribution platform. During the investigation, the statistical program application R was used with the syuzhet package and the NRC Emotion Lexicon. By using predefined functions in the syuzhet package, the emotions and sentiments were analyzed in the scraped virtual reality video game reviews. The results showed that, on average, virtual reality game reviews had more positive sentiments than negative ones. Similarly, statistical analyses confirmed that positive sentiments significantly outnumbered negative sentiments, while the types of sentiments affected their numbers in the reviews. Furthermore, anticipation, trust, and joy were the most frequent emotions. Significant differences also arose between emotions. Regression analyses revealed that different emotions significantly affected the number of emotions expressed in virtual reality game reviews. Understanding user sentiments and emotions is crucial as it provides an understanding for virtual reality game developers to create more engaging and satisfying gaming experiences. Specifically, developers can use the results to create more engaging games by focusing on elements that evoke positive sentiments such as anticipation, trust, and joy. For researchers, these results can drive further investigation into the psychological impacts of virtual reality gaming which can contribute to the development of more immersive and emotionally resonant virtual environments. Overall, these results can provide an understanding for virtual reality game developers and researchers to enhance game design and user engagement both in the gaming industry and in research.