(Mine)Crafting reality: MSIS researchers use video games to study vicarious experiences
Monday, May 5, 2025
Media Contact: Hallie Hart | Communications Coordinator | 405-744-1050 | hallie.hart@okstate.edu
What can you learn from a room of Oklahoma State University students engaging with popular video games Minecraft and Fortnite?
A lot, if you ask four researchers in the Spears School of Business Department of Management Science and Information Systems.
Doctoral students Caleb Krieger and Ghazal Abdolhossein Khani partnered with associate professor Dr. Andy Luse and professor Dr. Rathindra Sarathy for the study, “Is seeing the same as doing? An evaluation of vicarious experiences in the metaverse.”
Published in Decision Support Systems, their results defy conventional theories about perceptual technology experiences. The findings indicate people gain a sense of active participation and social collaboration when they watch others play video games.
“It’s almost like a mirrored experience,” Krieger said. “I get to experience it because you get to experience it.”
With implications for multiple industries, this paper uses social psychology to examine a growing tech trend.
Young audiences flock to platforms such as Twitch and YouTube, regularly watching livestreams of people playing video games. Global game streaming has grown into a multibillion-dollar market, according to multiple databases.
But, when Luse noticed his young nephew going online to watch Twitch streamers, the associate professor wondered why.
Academic theory told him people experience greater engagement and immersion levels as participants in an activity rather than observers of it.
“I was trying to figure out what’s bringing these people back to keep doing this all the time,” said Luse, a William S. Spears Chair in Business.
With mutual interest in this mystery, the research team assembled. Lead author Krieger had worked as Luse’s teaching assistant. They were the first people Khani met in the MSIS department upon arrival at OSU. Khani and Krieger enrolled in a seminar with Ardmore Chair of Business Administration Sarathy, bringing the group together.
The researchers had no trouble recruiting participants. When the authors asked OSU students to play video games in the Business Building, many answered the call, especially with professors offering extra credit.
“We often filled the room because people got excited,” Krieger said.
As a father of two, Krieger knows Minecraft and Fortnite are popular. His son enjoys both games, and the new Minecraft movie has birthed a quirky pop culture craze, launching a song into the Billboard Hot 100.
As an academic, Krieger chose these games for practical reasons. The researchers needed to craft their experiments around controlled virtual settings where users wouldn’t have to pay or set up accounts.
The authors turned to Mason Bayer, an OSU management information systems graduate listed in their paper’s acknowledgements. He created consistent in-game environments to eliminate unpredictable variables.
Then, they let the games begin. Some student pairs customized virtual rooms in Minecraft or Fortnite, actively engaging with the games and working together on interior design. Other students were not instructed to play. Instead, they watched videos of pairs designing Minecraft and Fortnite spaces from a third-person perspective of one avatar.
Every student then filled out a survey measuring their levels of embodied social presence. This concept refers to a collaborative experience in a metaverse, a virtual world using avatars, or game characters representing players.
Contrary to theory, ESP levels showed no significant differences between students who played and those who watched.
Passive observers reported feeling as if they were active participants.
Although video game streaming offers a new space for this phenomenon, it likely occurs elsewhere. Krieger explained it with a sports analogy. Football fans refer to their favorite teams as “we” while watching TV broadcasts, often yelling as if they’re coaching.
“We don’t know the people,” Krieger said. “We don’t play the game, but we do become so attached to them that win or lose, we cheer or we cry.”
Similarly, a viewer might identify with a Twitch streamer’s avatar in a game, saying “Turn left!” or “Add blocks there!” when that viewer has no control over the character.
In the boxy Minecraft metaverse, avatars use tools to build structures with basic, Lego-like graphics. Fortnite has higher-fidelity graphics, but both games allow viewers to experience their worlds vicariously.
Other metaverses contain more striking detail.
Beyond gaming, these vicarious experiences could help with training for high-stress jobs. New surgeons are starting to use metaverse technology, watching immersive videos of procedures to prepare for hands-on practice. Similarly, disaster response teams could use these technologies to learn how to manage vicarious emotions before entering the field, as the MSIS paper mentions.
“We’re getting to where we can create realistic metaverse phenomena,” Krieger said. “We can replicate things pretty honestly, and in some cases, it can be really powerful.”
With so many possibilities, the researchers are expanding their work. Khani said she and Krieger took screenshots of the students’ Minecraft and Fortnite creations to study correlations between ESP levels and performance. Could a higher sense of active participation correlate with more elaborate in-game designs?
“We gathered data for other research questions,” Khani said. “So, I want to see how ESP impacts the overall outcome of the collaboration in virtual settings.”
Krieger said he wants to identify factors that make an observer more or less likely to feel like an active participant. In the experiments, no one wore a virtual reality headset, but would results be different if they did?
In some cases, parasocial relationships contribute to livestreams’ appeal. For example, Kai Cenat, one of the world’s most popular Twitch streamers known for humor and charisma, earned about $8.5 million in 2024, according to Forbes.
But OSU’s research suggests people watch livestreams for reasons other than fandom. Students gained a sense of active participation while watching unknown people play games.
The researchers suggest tech companies should consider vicarious viewers while designing games, and further studies could offer guidelines.
“It’s probably more about understanding perceptual engagement,” Krieger said. “Once we begin to unravel that phenomenon, then you can begin to leverage your software to maximize those experiences.”