Making Futures Playable: Role-Based Virtual Reality Career Exploration to Promote Student Imagination and Creative Self-Efficacy

AI and automation are reshaping what the workforce requires — not just new technical skills, but imagination and the confidence to apply it. Schools are not keeping up. This paper asks whether VR can close that gap in a way a lecture cannot.

Career XRcade: Esports Land is a virtual reality platform built around embodied role-play, game-based learning, and narrative worldbuilding. Students don't observe career paths — they inhabit them, making decisions inside a simulated Esports production environment designed around authentic job roles.

What the study found

A mixed-methods pilot study tested a sequential design: students completed a traditional lecture first, then the VR experience. For students who completed both, paired-samples t-tests showed statistically significant gains in creative self-efficacy (p = .014, dz = 0.80) and career interest (p = .006, dz = 0.92) after the VR intervention. Imaginative capability showed a directionally positive trend but did not reach significance at this sample size.

Qualitatively, students described the immersive format as more tangible and effective for visualizing what a career actually feels like — and for building the confidence to imagine themselves in it.

Why it matters

The framework contributing to this study is built on three principles: embodied enactment, game-based learning, and authentic worldbuilding. The combination is specific — any one of the three alone is insufficient. Embodiment without narrative is a simulation. Narrative without gameplay lacks agency. Game-based learning without real-world stakes becomes abstraction. Together, they produce an experience that leaves students with something a slide deck cannot give them: a felt sense of possibility.