Within interactive gaming, it remains uncommon for players to engage with virtual experiences that portray significant cultural ceremonies.
But this is exactly what Rhett Loban set out to do through Torres Strait Virtual Reality (TSVR), with a storyline based on the Tombstone Opening ceremony, a significant cultural gathering held at the end of the mourning period for loved ones who have passed away.
The project demonstrates how virtual reality (VR) can become a vehicle for deep cultural representation and communication to audiences.
Communicating culture through immersive technology
The ceremony depicted in TSVR is the Tombstone Opening, a deeply significant Torres Strait Islander cultural practice that brings together families from across the Islands and mainland Australia to pay respects and remember a family member or loved on who has passed away.
Within the virtual environment the player takes on the role of someone involved in the Tombstone Opening preparation.
The player participates in activities connected to cultural life and preparation for the ceremony. Gathering dugong and turtle for the feast, travelling to northern islands to obtain items from Papua New Guinean traders, and encountering native flora and fauna.
The project also incorporates Torres Strait stories and cosmologies through constellation imagery, narrated storytelling (by an Elder) and encounters with Torres Strait Islander story characters.
Respectfully sharing Torres Strait stories in immersive media
“There was not much Torres Strait Islander representation or knowledge depicted in digital game or interactive immersive media.” Rhett says.
“I created the game because I felt Torres Strait Islander culture was not widely known or depicted in interactive immersive media. I wanted to help young people and students engage with Torres Strait Islander culture.”
Developing a digital experience that is culturally sound
To help ensure the experience was both well designed as a digital experience and aligned with cultural protocols, and an Elder and the Torres Strait Islander community were involved throughout the game development.
The team was led by a Torres Strait Islander (Rhett) with an Elder embedded into the team who was helping shape the game and also creating game assets in the form of narrator’s voice and drawings of constellations that would be depicted at night. During playtests and quality assurance process, the team engaged with community for input as a part of an iterative cultural protocol and the software development process.
“The Torres Strait stories, knowledge practices and depictions were constructed from the Elder and various community members’ input, external research, cultural stories/knowledge passed down and the product of interactions between Rhett, the Elder and community.
From game design into new contexts
The game is being applied in a wide range of educational contexts.
For example, Rhett worked with a fellow academic to implement TSVR in an environmental policy course. TSVR showed how different laws, policies and treaties were established to facilitate various existing cultural practices and relationships which were depicted through the VR experience.
“You’re engaging the senses in a variety of ways – seeing environments change from day to night, being guided from one environment to the next, collecting drums, mats, harpoons and spears, being led by a narrator. You are immersed in the story and environment. This is very powerful and could help provide a greater understanding and context to what’s being studied or read in a book.”
For Rhett, the broader goal is to create digital experiences shaped by Indigenous perspectives and cultural understandings.
“The cultural focus is key to integrating culture into games where cultural depictions are more than visual objects, but rather, reflections of deep cultural understandings of the world,” he says.
Dr Rhett Loban is the Director of Indigenous Education in the School of Computer Science, and Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Technology Sydney.
He is the author of ‘Embedding Culture into Video Games and Game Design’, a book that helps game designers and those interested in games to thoughtfully embed culture into video games and the game design process.