interactive museums

2003.10.23

Dr. Noah presented Physicus, an educational game designed to teach players about several concepts in physics.

The gameplay of Physicus is very similar to the classic game Myst. The player gets a first person view of the game world, and interacts through mouse clicks. Several different interactions are possible depending on the scene. For example, in one scene the player can turn a handle, and in another, lift a lever, each by clicking on the appropriate area. Similarly, the player can always navigate to another scene.

Technically, the game makes good use of graphics and sound. It uses mostly static pictures for scenes, with only limited animation. The scene transitions are made by simply loading the next scene, rather than using any kind of complicated animation. This allows the game to be much less complicated for the programmers, and allows machines of most any system resources to run the program, while at the same time allowing interesting gameplay.

The learning in Physicus is accomplished through interacting with the game universe. Experimental learning is encouraged, since the player clicks anywhere and everywhere in the scene to attempt to accomplish the task they are working on. In game education is provided through a 'laptop' that the player has with them at all times. This laptop contains many different lessons on practically all aspects of physics, and allows the player to lookup information on any challenge they come accross while playing the game.

The only real weakness to the game is that there is no real followup to each task. When the player successfully accomplishes a goal, it is assumed that they understand why what they did was successful. This neglects the possibility that they merely attempted to click everywhere in each scene, accomplishing the tasks through a brute force approach. If Physicus contained a mechanism for feedback, such as telling the user, "Good Job: This is what happened, and here is why it happened," then I think more players would learn from this game. As it is, experimental learners, and those with some kind of background in physics, will probably get a lot out of this game, while others may not.