This fall, Educational Technology Services (ETS) co-sponsored a Women in Gaming (WIG) playthrough of Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, a cooperative, multiplayer virtual reality game. In the game, one player (the defuser, wearing a virtual reality headset) is trapped inside a virtual room and must verbally describe a bomb that only the person wearing the headset can see, while the other players flip through a 23-page manual to talk the bomb defuser through a series of deactivation puzzles. The defuser has five minutes to click through the correct combination of tasks before the bomb explodes. To make the job more challenging, the lights in the game go off periodically and an alarm clock sounds at random intervals. The defuser must shut it off without wasting time.
While five minutes appears to be an excessive amount of time, as the bombs got progressively more complex, time became more precious and as a result, there were casualties.
Gameplay was followed by a brief discussion. Participants considered how the game might apply to real-world learning scenarios. Question prompts, posted to a whiteboard and available throughout the event, included:
- Can simulated cooperative puzzle solving help teach effective communication?
- Does the simulated urgency effectively teach communication under pressure?
- Can this be applied to other real-world situations? (eg. the ER)
- What does virtual reality add to the experience and potential application of this game?
To continue the discussion online, questions and answers were later posted to the WIG website Discussion Forums.
Joce Kofke ‘19 wrapped up the event with a walk-through of the website and the KnowledgeLab library of games and resources. The list of games includes shared games from ETS and the Smith College Gaming Lab, and are available at all of these locations.
“This was a very lively and interesting event. All of the students who attended played at least once and it was fun to see everyone get into the collaborative problem-solving nature of this game, even if someone was initially nervous about participating. It was really great to see our fall event attended so well and that the conversation is continuing online even past the initial event.” –Reese Jullian
This was the first of several planned playthroughs designed to highlight and connect the various areas of gaming interest and resources on campus. The event was co-sponsored by ETS, KnowledgeLab and the Smith College Gaming Lab. Event coordinators from the KnowledgeLab advisory committee and co-advisors for WIG are Tammy Lockett, Online Instructional Designer for ETS and Reese Jullian, Circulations Manager for Young Library. VR players for each game were instructed and suited up by Dan Bennett, Media Producer for ETS’Center for Media Production (CMP). Students in attendance included Joce Kofke ‘19, KL Gaming Coordinator, Tori Clayton ‘18, KL Coordinator, and Raven Gomez ‘18, Smith College Gaming Lab Manager.
Students and faculty interested in exploring our virtual reality technologies may contact us at ets@smith.edu to set-up an appointment.