Flipping into the Future: Exploring Player Experience and Task Demand in Physical, VR, and PC Pinball
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Attempts to digitize pinball have been met with skepticism; however, VR presents a new opportunity to access and enjoy this popular game. In a controlled study (N=60), we investigated how physical pinball, VR pinball, and PC pinball differ in terms of player experience (pX) and task demand using both quantitative and qualitative data. Participants mainly preferred physical pinball, followed by VR pinball; only two participants preferred pinball on the PC. With the exception of immersion, results showed no pX differences between physical and VR pinball; although PC pinball was rated as inferior on multiple dimensions. Furthermore, enjoyment of physical pinball was associated with curiosity, control, and challenge, whereas in VR and PC pinball, immersion and audiovisual appeal mattered. Interestingly, preference and pX did not depend on existing familiarity with pinball. Our findings suggest that VR can offer an accessible, enjoyable pinball experience, regardless of familiarity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".