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"I Packed My Bag and in It I Put...": A Taxonomy of Inventory Systems for Virtual Reality Games

Sebastian Cmentowski, Andrey Krekhov, Jens Krüger

TL;DR

The paper addresses the gap in VR inventory design by combining a literature review, developer interviews, and grounded theory analysis of VR games to map the design space. It introduces a four-building-block taxonomy—Interface, Item Representation, Item Arrangement, and Interactions—driven by game and user requirements, and demonstrates its applicability via three prototype inventories: Flat Grid, Virtual Drawers, and Magnetic Surface. This framework provides practical guidelines for VR inventory design and lays out open questions for refining the design space and validating tradeoffs. The work advances understanding of how inventory systems can be integrated into VR gameplay to enhance immersion and interactivity.

Abstract

On a journey, a backpack is a perfect place to store and organize the necessary provisions and tools. Similarly, carrying and managing items is a central part of most digital games, providing significant prospects for the player experience. Even though VR games are gradually becoming more mature, most of them still avoid this essential feature. Some of the reasons for this deficit are the additional requirements and challenges that VR imposes on developers to achieve a compelling user experience. We structure the ample design space of VR inventories by analyzing popular VR games and developing a structural taxonomy. We combine our insights with feedback from game developers to identify the essential building blocks and design choices. Finally, we propose meaningful design implications and demonstrate the practical use of our work in action.

"I Packed My Bag and in It I Put...": A Taxonomy of Inventory Systems for Virtual Reality Games

TL;DR

The paper addresses the gap in VR inventory design by combining a literature review, developer interviews, and grounded theory analysis of VR games to map the design space. It introduces a four-building-block taxonomy—Interface, Item Representation, Item Arrangement, and Interactions—driven by game and user requirements, and demonstrates its applicability via three prototype inventories: Flat Grid, Virtual Drawers, and Magnetic Surface. This framework provides practical guidelines for VR inventory design and lays out open questions for refining the design space and validating tradeoffs. The work advances understanding of how inventory systems can be integrated into VR gameplay to enhance immersion and interactivity.

Abstract

On a journey, a backpack is a perfect place to store and organize the necessary provisions and tools. Similarly, carrying and managing items is a central part of most digital games, providing significant prospects for the player experience. Even though VR games are gradually becoming more mature, most of them still avoid this essential feature. Some of the reasons for this deficit are the additional requirements and challenges that VR imposes on developers to achieve a compelling user experience. We structure the ample design space of VR inventories by analyzing popular VR games and developing a structural taxonomy. We combine our insights with feedback from game developers to identify the essential building blocks and design choices. Finally, we propose meaningful design implications and demonstrate the practical use of our work in action.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 24 sections, 4 figures, 2 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Related Work
  3. Layout
  4. Placement
  5. Interaction
  6. Gathering Input from Developers
  7. Analyzing VR Games Using Grounded Theory
  8. Results
  9. Game-Related Requirements
  10. User-Related Requirements
  11. Comprehensibility
  12. Interactivity
  13. Contextual Embedding
  14. Personalization
  15. Structural Taxonomy
  16. ...and 9 more sections

Figures (4)

  • Figure 1: Flowchart illustrating our research process, including the related work, developer interviews, and games analysis.
  • Figure 2: Grounded theory analysis: The initial observations are formalized into open codes, which are structured into concepts and overall building blocks.
  • Figure 3: Requirements and taxonomy of inventory systems in virtual environments. This figure is read from the left, starting with the requirements that should be taken into account before designing inventories. The considerations are used to select the design choices in the taxonomy on the right.
  • Figure 4: Our three inventory prototypes: Flat Grid (left), Virtual Drawers (middle), and Magnetic Surface (right).