Space Party Rescue: An auditory game of finding your friend at a cocktail party

Virtual reality (VR) technology has enabled researchers to investigate real-world communication behaviors within immersive simulated environments. Twenty adults aged 19–37 years with normal hearing completed a tablet-based spatial release from a masking game (Pipes Puzzle) and a VR game (Space Party Rescue). In Space Party Rescue, participants navigated a virtual party on a spaceship to find specific talkers based on the topic of their monologue. The number of seconds required to locate each talker was recorded as primary data. The average time to find each talker in Space Party Rescue was moderately correlated with the target-to-masker ratio threshold with colocated maskers, measured with Pipes Puzzle (r = 0.459). This result indicates some shared variance between the two games in assessing speech recognition at a positive target-to-masker ratio and reflects a common behavioral strategy in Space Party Rescue; participants navigated to positions with favorable signal-to-noise ratio to locate the targets, rather than scanning the scene from a fixed position using spatial cues. Participants reported greater enjoyment and perceived success in Space Party Rescue compared to Pipes Puzzle, which may reflect the immersive nature of the VR game, and the greater autonomy afforded to participants in Space Party Rescue.