Welcome to the Games Institute

The virtual reality experience “Digital Oral Histories for Reconciliation” (DOHR) was recently peer-reviewed in Reviews in Digital Humanities volume 3 issue 1 on January 18^th, 2022.

The DOHR project uses VR to explore the Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children (NSHCC) as part of the curriculum for Grade 11 Canadian History students in Nova Scotia. NSHCC was opened in 1921 and operated until the 1980s and former Residents have come forward with stories of the physical, psychological, and sexual abuse they suffered there as children.

On December 2nd Matt Parker, a professor at the NYU Games Center, presented his work focusing on games and climate change to the researchers at the GI. Professor Parker taught the GI’s members about “carbon removal”, a technology that uses machines to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Parker emphasized that because emissions goals have not been met, even if people never released any more CO2 again, we would still need to remove carbon from the atmosphere to survive.

After a long period without visitors due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Games Institute (GI) was happy to welcome Associate Minister Kaleed Rasheed to the GI facilities on November 9th as part of his tour of the UW's main and Stratford campuses.