A Case Study: Chronic Pain Patients' Preferences For Virtual Reality Games For Pain Distraction

We plan to conduct a longitudinal mixed-methods study to evaluate the impact of home-use Virtual Reality (VR) for chronic pain (CP) management with cancer survivors over a six-week period. The participants will play VR games for a minimum of 30 min per day for at least three days per week. Each week, the participants are required to use randomly assigned VR content from a group of VR titles that ranged from commercially-available VR games to VR meditation designed specifically for people with CP. Well before launching the longitudinal study, we compiled, tested, categorized and eliminated commercial VR titles, and developed a short list that varied by genre and methods of interaction. Therefore, to better understand which are the best VR games to use, how to offer good VR gaming experiences, and validate our choices, we compared CP patients' experiences of some selected games in VR and non-VR conditions in this research. Seven pain patients took part in the focus group study; initial results suggest participants preferred VR conditions compared to PC games according to both of the quantitative ratings and the qualitative interviews. They also liked puzzle-solving game mechanism comparing to exploration games. Participants also mentioned that the platform (VR vs. PC monitor) is more important than the actual content. This result will be helpful for the researchers to select proper VR games to test in the longitudinal study for pain distraction and management purposes since it has been done with patients.