Fantasy Gaming and Virtual Heritage

Virtual worlds are increasingly being developed to provide a navigable space for museum collections. The Virtual Sydney Rocks (VSR) [3] is one such virtual world that has been constructed as an authentic representation of the area of first European settlement in Australia 230 years ago - from a time just before its settlement until the present day. We constructed two versions of a game for children in order to motivate interaction with, and learning of, the historical content of the VSR. One of these game versions contained a number of fantasy design elements with the idea that their inclusion would motivate children to engage with VSR content in a pleasurable way. A preliminary study with a small number of school-aged children was not able to show that the inclusion of fantasy elements affected either the comprehension of historical facts or the quality of moral judgements made by the children. This study did, however, provide some evidence that interactivity with the relevant parts of the virtual world may have affected the retention of historical facts.