Author: Miki

 
With a fun narrative and new media technology, Whale-Being Park aims to create an immersive, gamified educational experience. It targets children in K-8 schools (age 9 – 14) starting their scientific education, aiming to stimulate a curiosity for science by creating a unique, exploratory experience in VR.
Comparing to other games that purely use ocean and evolution as a theme for a game, and educational videos that aim to compress knowledge in the shortest time possible, Whale-Being Park develops on these concepts to make the education more fun. Players are allowed to explore the world of evolution at their own pace, but the over-all progression is monitored and well-curated, ensuring that critical knowledge is delivered before the game progress further. For example, the game is curated in different stages. The concept of geological timescale and background knowledge of evolution is taught and tested to allow the user to advance to the next era of time.
The game is divided into the following stages: the tutorial stage, the background knowledge briefing stage, the stage where the first whale appeared, the Oligocene stage, and the final stage to conclude the game. In each stage, the geological landscape, fauna, climate, and animals are curated true to the corresponding time period. Along the journey, an audio guide will be guiding the tour with instructions and scientific knowledge. With interactive elements and game mechanism to help proceed to the next stage, the users have more incentive to learn about the background and related topics to whale evolution.
The project title, Whale-Being Park, not only implies the theme of the project evolving around whales but also invites the users to care more about the well-being of the Earth coming out of this experience. The project idea of integrating science education and new media technology was inspired by the Plankton Populations Exhibit at Exploratorium Museum, where people from all age ranged were fascinated and curious to learn more about plankton, a fairly difficult science knowledge because of the way it was presented with the help of new media. It adds playfulness to a serious topic and gives people more incentive to study and explore the nature around them.
To best focus on education with new media, I decided to choose evolution as my project theme. Since evolution is a concept that not only teaches us about what happened in the past but also helps us to speculate the future, it will be a good topic to raise environmental awareness. More importantly, I want to harness the potential of VR as the technological approach to help raise empathy, to help people be compassionate about the Earth we are living on today. Inspired by the movie series, Jurrasic Park, I want to recreate a VR experience to allow users to go through different time periods. By looking at moving animals, the children can be more engaged in the experience.
Even though the game was designed for children, but in the actual user testings with children, I do find that there are many other factors to be taken into account in game design. First of all, children around 5 years old are too young to be able to wear a VR headset. Their heads were not strong or big enough to hold a VR headset. Secondly, there is such a huge height difference in their height, which affects their ability to reach and user interface. However, all children at the IMA show loved the game. I see the potential of a more flexible system for different heights.