An Asymmetric Virtual Reality Game on Water Scarcity

Abstract: Access to water is a necessity for farmers for them to be able to produce food. This poses a problem in Jordan, one of the world’s driest countries, but also in Sweden, where after a drought in the summer of 2018 the state of the water levels was more critical than ever. Virtual reality (VR) has shown to be a tool with a good effect on students’ learning. In this work VR has been taken advantage of in order to increase the understanding of water scarcity. The challenge was to present the issue of water scarcity within farming for a group of high school students in a VR game suitable to be used at a science center. An obstacle to introducing VR in such a setting is that the experience should be suitable for a group of people. In this report a user centered design approach has been taken to make a VR game on drought to be used in groups of up to about 10 students. By including 360-degree video footage of farmers and experts in Sweden and Jordan a game has been developed to make students more aware of the issues of water scarcity. The goal was to design a game involving all students regardless of playing in the VR headset or outside and encourage a discussion on water scarcity between the players. The game was developed in four iterations and concluded with a user verification test where the application was used in a real life setting at a school visit of a science center. The final tests showed that the solution worked well as an asymmetric game and had potential in increased learning but it did not reach the hoped level of discussion and the roles inside and outside VR were not equally engaged.