We have been working with iCreate for several years. Our Web site is our main selling tool and it works very well for us,here in France. This year we needed a complete overhaul and all the changes were completed with smooth efficiency. Then of course we noticed some more change and all of these...
Marketing Director, Le Jardin Du Cure View more'My New Uni' Virtual Reality Game for Staffordshire Uni Students
Staffordshire University is proud of its reputation as a friendly and welcoming place to study, and its marketing team came up with an innovative idea to ensure that new students would feel confident and well informed on arrival at the uni for Freshers week.
My New Uni is an alternate reality game (ARG) that provides students with a virtual Welcome Week experience. It's not just a dynamic 3D map of both campuses - with walkthrough mode - but it's also a step by step guide to what students will need to know and do when they arrive.
After a few introductory steps, where students select which campus they will be based at and enter details such as their Halls of Residence, the game starts. Birds eye view allows the user to get a clear overview of the campus and see exactly where they are at any time. All buildings and key amenities such as bus stops and cafes are also labelled.
Walkthrough Mode provides a virtual reality 'first person perspective' on the campus, which has been modelled in high detail by the team at iCreate. We visited both the Stoke and Stafford campuses to take extensive reference photographs, and then built optimised 3D models of all the buildings and landscaping, in order to create full recognisable campus models that really are just like being there!
Patrick Hore, one of the computer games graduates at Staffordshire University, helped us out with the creation of these really funky characters to populate the game. The variety of different avatars really helps to add personality to the game and make the university seem fun and welcoming.
Users are tasked with walking around to find key buildings - some of which they are able to go into - which teaches them there way around and helps familiarise themselves with the environment before they arrive on campus. Game players have confirmed how useful this is - especially so for visually- or physically- impaired students who said they would otherwise find the experience of arriving at university for the first time very daunting.
By walking up to the characters around campus, the users are able to start conversations and receive instructions about what to do next. Some of the characters are 'FAQ avatars', which means they are programmed to answer a list of commonly asked questions about university life - a more interesting way to communicate this information than a boring web page or printed document.
Players are taken through the process of enrolment and collecting their student cards, which includes reminding them about which items of paperwork they need to bring with them. They are also reminded to carry out certain key tasks online before arriving, such as uploading their photo to the Staffordshire Uni portal - with direct links through to the right URL so they can easilly complete this task. The hope is that the process of enrolment will be much smoother this year, thanks to more students arriving fully prepared with all the right bits of paper!
The game includes an inventory listing the various items that the player needs to collect as they explore the campus, including their student card, the key to their room, their Students' Union goody bag and a bus timetable. These tasks are checked off the list as they are completed. Players also pick up notes as they talk to people, so for example if an avatar gives them a useful link which they may want to refer back to later, this is stored in their Notebook for future reference.
By talking to all the different people in the enrolment hall, students are fully informed about what to expect in their first few weeks at uni. It has been proven that we retain more information when we are forced to seek it out in an interactive way, instead of receiving it passively or reading it in a text document.
One of the tasks in the game is to collect flyers about all the events and activities on offer for students to try during Freshers Week. These are flyers for real events, so students are able to plan their Welcome Week experience before they arrive. Staffordshire University have recognised that it's crucial for student retention that Freshers make friends in the first couple of weeks at uni - so they are encouraged, through the game, to join in and get involved in as many activities as possible.
Once they've completed all their tasks, players are free to explore the campus as much as they like. And then the game ends with a Welcome message for the Vice Chancelllor of the university!
Click here to download the game for yourself.
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iViewer 3D Applications bring new property developments to life as interactive 3D models, enabling users to explore interactive virtual worlds and 3D maps using touchscreens, games controllers, iPADs and smart phones.
