time to relax
You can now enjoy holiday adventures in your own home. Forget your To-do list and escape to Dodo Hamari Island! Dodo Adventures is a story-based virtual reality experience where you meet extinct animals. You can choose to solve tasks or take a meditative trip to a lost paradise.
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The Story
Dodo Adventures aims to bring awareness to the impacts of human behavior using our science-based technique. The project has received funding from AVEK – The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture in Finland, which has been awarded toward preparing a digital demo for the first game in the series.
Dodo Adventures User Feedback
The Experience
In the first episode of the Dodo Adventures series, the player experiences something unusual. This is a story-based experience, where the player experiences an extinct animal and solves tasks, all in Virtual Reality.
We are currently making Dodo Adventures for VR gamers and museums.
Dodo Adventures Main Theme by Elio Messina
Education and Research
Recent research has shown that using VR experiences can have a longer and more positive impact on changing behavior than using videos or articles.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Dodo Adventures Series is an effective educational tool that helps to inspire strong empathy towards animals. VR experience takes visitors on a journey where they can see the invasion of habitat through the eyes of a dodo bird. This is an excellent conversation starter for different topics: animal rights, invasive species, climate change, extinct animals, conservation and the role of museums including the history of colonization.
The embodiment (the connection between the real person and their virtual avatar) can influence self-identity and behaviours. For example the researchers found that regardless of participants' own BMI, those using thin avatars showed increased physical activity compared to those using obese avatars. Also participants that perceived their avatar as more obese than their virtual opponent showed decreased physical activity in the real world while playing the game.
Source: Jorge Peña et al. I Am What I See: How Avatar and Opponent Agent Body Size Affects Physical Activity Among Men Playing Exergames, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (2016). DOI: 10.1111/jcc4.12151
Besides being a crowd pleaser, recent research has shown that using VR experiences can have a longer and more positive impact on changing behavior than using videos or articles. For example, a research group at Stanford University has been experimenting with influencing behaviour through VR experiences, particularly around environmental issues. They have had a more lasting impact with immersive games than watching a video or reading texts. In one experiment participants could get a real feel of cutting down the tree, after which their paper consumption dropped by 20 percent and started to prefer recycled paper products. Whilst watching a video or reading an article about deforestation also heightened awareness of paper waste for a day, for those with VR experience those effects continued into the next few weeks and researchers hypothesize it will be a fairly permanent shift. Same applied for the participants in coral reef experiences.
Source: https://vhil.stanford.edu/projects/2019/environmental-education-research/
We cannot change the past, we cannot reverse what humans as a species have done to other species. But we can interact with our present and think about our future. Dodo Adventures is a small time capsule that helps us understand how we can be better, looking at the past in the present time. Technology helps us in an educational as well as entertaining way to see, hear and feel. The first step to learn is to ask, to generate the spark of curiosity that leads us to the next question.
Story-based VR games offer an opportunity for deep emotional engagement, which in turn can lead to positive changes in the behaviour. It is also something that users crave after the novelty of escaping to VR world has worn off.
For example Malcolm Burt from Queensland University of Technology has been researching what consumers want from VR entertainment experiences. He found that even with advanced immersive technology, people still hunger to be told stories, but most of the current offerings are over-reliant on technology alone as a way to attract participants to these experiences.
The Dodo experience addresses the story-driven approach to biodiversity and sustainable development, enabling the user to experience positive behavioral change in immersive audiovisual gaming experience. We are animals.
Yes, it's a non-violent game with soft language and children-friendly content. It is important to notice, that since there are no long term studies on the possible impact of VR headsets, most headset manufactors have set a 13+ age rating.
Dodo Adventures is a single player game.
You need a VR headset and 2 controllers. Suitable headsets are Oculus Rift, HTC Vive or Sony's PlayStation VR. Currently the standalone VR headsets are not suitable for this game.