Vicariously there: connected with our own and other characters

It is argued that the greater a user perceives him/herself to be vicariously in character or is able to empathize with other characters/humans, the more they have a sense of being connected to a mediated environment. The term coined to describe this sense of user engagement is “vicariously there”. In this article we provide a framework of vicarious and empathic experience in mediated environments and review previous work and their measures. Focusing on three-dimensional interactive mediated environments (IME: digital games, virtual reality, virtual environments, etc.), we describe on-going research towards the development of ways to reason about the extent to which users feel a sense of engagement with, or connection to, characters or users. Limitations of this work are identified and future research directions towards an unobtrusive and continuous method are discussed.