Juliette Le Meudec

Treeam: Immersive Collaborative Forest Game

Publication : IEEE VR 25 for 3DUI Contest (Paper Link)

More information on this project on Treeam page Project on Bivwac's research team website.

Context: This project explores collaborative learning through an immersive serious game focused on trees and forest ecosystems.

Treeam is a VR collaborative serious game conveying information about biophysical processes of trees reacting to dangers.
By having players embodying the internal functioning of trees, we want to make people more aware about the way trees live, while playing an enjoyable game. Through what we call indirect-collaboration, we allow players to communicate and help each other in order for the forest to stay alive, while completing individual mini-games.
This project questions the tendency of humans to project their own behaviours on other entities. In Treeam, we challenge the concept of collaboration between trees. Indeed, for some experts, trees do not collaborate with each other. Instead, they are in competition for resources. Thus, applying anthropomorphism to these biophysical process can show limits. In the other hand, anthropomorphism may increase the empathy of humans toward trees, raising awareness and trigger the will to protect nature. This questioning leads us to a trade-off: is it better to have a scientific and precise explanation about trees or to include some anthropomorphism to nudge people toward more sustainable behaviours? Further research must be conducted to answer this question.

Impact: This work contributes to understanding how immersive technologies can enhance collaborative learning in environmental education, providing insights for future educational VR applications.