Hyperlinked Environments Reflection

(Ubisoft, n.d.a)

While I was browsing the student explorations in this module, I found the one talking about the Metaverse, Minecraft, and the Uncensored Library particularly interesting. As a longtime gamer myself, I have always felt that games, more so than books, TV shows, and movies, have the potential to deliver incredibly immersive experiences which allow players to experience and directly interact with various situations, and the inclusion of virtual and augmented reality technology seems to be something which can increase that level of immersion and interaction by a significant amount. I know I, at least, tend to feel pretty immersed already when I’m in the middle of playing a good adventure game like Skyrim or Breath of the Wild; it can really make me feel like I am on an actual adventure in many ways, discovering new sights and experiences at every twist and turn. I can only imagine how virtual reality might enhance that immersive feeling; I admit I haven’t yet had the opportunity to try virtual reality out yet myself, but based on what I have heard, it is an experience unlike any other.

I was also reminded of something I had briefly mentioned a few years ago in my introduction post for Info 200, the Discovery Tours that Ubisoft has been offering alongside a few games made by them from the popular Assassin’s Creed franchise. These Discovery Tours are set in similar game worlds to their corresponding games which are based on actual historical periods and locations such as Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece. Unlike the games however, they are made to be played by both experienced gamers and non-gamers alike so players won’t need to worry about such things as combat or avoiding enemies, they can just explore the game world at their own leisure and learn a little bit about the history of the depicted era in the process (Ubisoft, n.d.a).

A number of educators have already made use of Discovery Tours in their classrooms in order to teach their students history in a more interactive and immersive manner, and Ubisoft has even partnered with McGill University in Montreal to create curriculum guides for these educators to use in developing lesson plans based on them (Ubisoft, n.d.b), so it might also be possible for a library to develop programs utilizing them as well to teach history to those who are interested. Despite there only being a few Discovery Tours available as of now, the idea behind them seems interesting and I would love to see it applied more broadly to a range of historical locations and time periods. It might even be theoretically possible to combine this idea with virtual reality so people can feel even more deeply immersed in history, though this would admittedly take a very large amount of manpower to realize. There’s still no harm in dreaming though, and I hope this dream can eventually become reality.

References:

Ubisoft. (n.d.). Discovery Tour by Ubisoft: Teacher learning resources. Retrieved October 22, 2025, from https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/assassins-creed/discovery-tour

Ubisoft. (n.d.). Discovery Tour: Curriculum guides overview. Retrieved October 22, 2025, from https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/game/assassins-creed/discovery-tour/curriculum-guide