Author: Zook

During my research into Virtual Reality this week, I learned a lot about how educational the resource can be when utilized correctly. For some background into the field, Virtual Reality has actually existed since the 1950’s when Morton Heilig created this room called a Sensorama – basically a movie theatre that utilized all five senses. Later in the 60’s a professor at MIT would make the first VR helmet that we think of today, with the awesome name “The Sword of Damocles” (even though it was technically too heavy to wear on its own and had to be hung from the ceiling). The idea gained popularity and even groups like NASA began to experiment with virtual reality, although most were basic approximations because the technology of the 70’s, 80’s, and even 90’s (with the beautiful mess that is Nintendo’s Virtual Boy) was simply not there yet to recreate a true sense of “reality.”

By the mid 80’s and 90’s virtual reality had been picked up by smaller groups who all thought they could do it better, in particular video game companies who thought they could revolutionize how we game. Needless to say they were all terrible. My favorite particularly bad headset was Nintendo’s Virtual Boy, which used only blinding red LED lights in a sort of “virtual depth” experience theorized to cause migraines and lazy eyes in children. On top of all that it still used a controller and was stationary, so not exactly the virtual reality they were advertising it to be. I include this as a note to myself on what Not to do in my game – don’t make a game that’s physically hard to look at, don’t rush out a product, and don’t make something that no one wants.

Today the website Virtual Reality For Education collects articles about the multitude of ways Virtual Reality can stimulate our learning experiences, from teaching about natural disasters by putting the player in the middle of tornado touchdown to training public speaking skills by placing the player in an professional office setting (http://virtualrealityforeducation.com/). It can be used by medical students or professionals to study human anatomy hands on and to scale rather than reading about it in a textbook, or help autistic children learn in a ways catered to their specific needs. The versatility and usability of VR has bloomed in the last decade, but when it comes to its application as a game console the same can’t be said. While some like the Oculus Rift have been popular, they’re still not mainstream due to high prices and lack of a larger game library. Therefore, the application of virtual reality as an educational device is what my project should focus on to be the most successful it can be. While I’m still making a game, the cryptid museum will educate and thereby lean into what makes VR worth the time to implement. Further, by knowing the past of VR we can peer into its future – it’s obvious humans are entranced by virtual reality and its a concept we’ve returned to over the past seven decades. I don’t see it going out of interest any time soon, especially not as technology develops exponentially closer to our concept of “reality.” Maybe VR is not in its prime yet and its technology still needs a decade or two to refine itself, but smaller niche studies have tapped into its potential as a way to relearn reality. Hopefully the use of virtual reality in my cryptid museum can allow the player, even for just a minute or two, to relearn their reality.

This week I dedicated my research time to finding out more about the cryptids I hope to incorporate into my museum; however, the cryptid with by far the most information available was Bigfoot. I spent time reading academic papers trying to both prove and disprove his existence, watching sighting videos (the most important being the iconic Patterson-Gimlin Film that started the Bigfoot hype in 1967), and learning about Bigfoot’s origins from Native American myth. Out of all of this, what I found to be the most important was not whether or not he was real, but that I recreate Bigfoot in a way that respects the Native American lore.

Originally I wanted to include the Wendigo in my museum, but during the initial concept phase I learned how Wendigos are formed by the possession of the body by Native American spirits that seeks to cannibalize and harm others. Being a white woman, this is not my story to tell. On top of that, if I portrayed the Wendigo wrong I could risk creating negative stereotypes about Native Americans; therefore, I decided to cut it from the museum. The difference between the Wendigo and Bigfoot is that Bigfoot lore is extremely varied – Native American tribes all have completely different ideas of who he is, if he’s a simple creature just trying to survive or a bloodthirsty ape that attacks anything that comes too close. This vast difference in storytelling means there’s really no wrong way to portray him (as long as he isn’t meant to stereotype a real group of people), since there’s no one “correct” way of portraying him either.

Unlike Bigfoot and the Wendigo, my research into the Jersey Devil and Mothman found that their legends are rather simple. The Mothman’s origin is simply that someone saw a flying man moth creature in West Virginia, while the Jersey Devil is said to be the 13th son of the Leeds family who was cursed by his mother to become the devil. These two get up to light mischief, at most killing a goat every now and then. I would even argue that Mothman is a neutral party and the Jersey Devil is to be pitied as an abandoned child acting out. Either way, their vague histories allows for a great leeway in personal interpretation that has convinced me to have the Jersey Devil be the cryptid that comes to life in the museum, rather than my original plan for Bigfoot to do so. The Jersey Devil makes the most sense since his story can be interpreted as literal devil or a child with physical deformities abandoned by his mother. I intend to fuse the concepts together and create a kind of Hellboy scenario with a devil child that runs around the museum causing chaos.