Welcome to the LXVRgames blog

I’ve started writing a new book, “The Soul of a New LX”, and I’m going to use this blog to share that process.  The book is an “inside production” look at embarking upon producing game-based learning for VR. 

The central theme for the book and for this blog is answering a question:

“For game-based learning, how and why should the learning experience (LX) be designed, developed, and deployed differently for VR?”

Getting Started ...

 

If you are reading this post, chances are you may have a similar memory to mine from 1996.  Many faculty colleagues at my community college were quite certain that the emerging ‘World Wide Web’ was technology hype that would never be useful in collegiate instruction.  Students were not going to have their own computers at home that could connect to it, email was impractical, and like the great CDROM failure – there would never be enough content to make it meaningful. 

When you first saw the web, perhaps you, like me, thought … “wow, this is going to change everything!”

If you are a little younger than me, and for you there has always been a web … try to consider this story in light of ancient history.

That year, I spent precious equipment funds on an Apple HTTP server and launched the college’s first web page – which was the college website for several years.  The Macs in my lab were connected to the web by this server, and we began exploring embryonic html development in class.  

Like so many early adopters of the web for education, the first thing that I tried to do was take my face-to-face (f2f) classroom materials and fashion them into web pages … text, images, a few videos, etc..  Initially, that was very gratifying … I could easily provide instant access to course materials anytime, anywhere.

Shortly thereafter came my first online course.  Again, I repeated the same process of trying to take my f2f classroom and replicate that in an online course (created with FrontPage … no kidding).  First there were discussion forums, and next was live webcasting … all of which was very exciting.

Like so many others, it took me several years to learn that online learning is completely different than f2f instruction and leveraging the immense power requires a totally different approach.

20 years later, it happened for me again.  The first time I put a consumer head-mounted display (HMD) on, it struck me again, “WOW, this is going to change everything”  …  only this time the “WOW” was in all caps.

By the way, if you have been working with VR you are already familiar with the omnipresent “wow” … when someone puts the HMD on for the first time …. they turn their head slowly and look around the scene … and say, “wow.”

For me, as a game-based learning developer and researcher, what struck me in that initial use of VR was the deep, total, and thrilling presence in the media.  I’ve had the opportunity to visit CAVE’s, flight simulators, driving simulators, and other six figure VR training environments … and those were all very impressive.  But, this was different.  This was personal … intimate … and end-user affordable. 

I find myself now in a similar situation to that experience in 1996.  After 20+ years of developing game-based learning for the 2D plane of large and small screens, VR is a platform advancement that requires a paradigm shift in design, development, and deployment.

I feel fortunate that I’ve been developing game-based learning in 3D for 20+ years.  First in Virtools for 10 years, and in Unity since.  While that work has always been constrained by the fact that those 3D games were experienced through the 2D plane of a computer monitor, TV, tablet or phone – they all are truly three-dimensional … with environments that the learner is free to navigate, with characters and objects that are interactive. 

Of course, much like 1996, the first thing that I did was to bring most these 3D games into VR …  since Unity has such a terrific toolset for Oculus Touch and GearVR, this was quickly done and it was at once exciting and humbling.  It was SO amazing to actually be within these environments that I had created, rather than looking at them from the outside through a monitor.  Now two years later, I still enjoy pulling in an environment from a game project from back in the day just to roam around and experience it from within … something akin to sightseeing past creative work.  I’ve found those environments to be engaging and immersive in a way that my wildest imagination could have never conceived.

But, as enjoyable as that sightseeing is … these games themselves simply aren’t playable.  After 20+ years of striving to design, develop, and deploy effective games for learning – VR has changed the game (pun intended).

Every aspect of game-based learning design and development must be rethought for VR.  Design must be rethought, the tech stack requires different processes, tools, and techniques, and the deployment enterprise must be fundamentally different.

This is a career redefining challenge, something that I find invigorating and eagerly accept.  This blog will chronicle that effort. Through this blog, with stops along the way at conferences, and later through my upcoming book – I invite you to join me and share your work and experiences as we all explore defining this “Soul of a New LX”.