Island game developer brings P.E.I. back to the 1600’s in new immersive VR game

The VR game will be made into an educational tool 

By: Ryan McKellop - Oct. 25, 2024

Jay King wants to bring Islanders back in time. He is a game developer and 3D artist who is making a virtual reality game called First World based on P.E.I. before European contact. 

He started development of the game seven months ago and is expected to be done in about a year and a half. 

It is a survival game that starts off in a wigwam, featuring environments such as an old-growth forest, where trees are over 400 feet tall. There are other environments like marshlands, cliffs and beaches. 

The game has an inventory system, animals from that time period and the main goal is to survive, crafting better gear as you get better materials. 

“I liked 3D art and played video games a lot and I was interested in the way they’re made.” 

King works at Indigital Skills Studio, it’s a studio that helps Indigenous people build on their digital skills., through art and more. 

This will be the first full VR game King has made. 

“I had mentioned that I developed a little bit of a VR scene when I was in college and she had the idea of a wigwam, and so I started modelling that and put it into unity and the development went from there.” 

The game is being developed on the Meta Quest 2 but will be ported to other platforms when it is released. 

The studio’s plan for the game is to use it as a educational tool, as well as a full game people can buy. 

“They have plans to put it into schools as an educational tool, that’s just the start, I would like to see it as a full game, VR game to put out on Steam or Orign or something like that.” 

Steam and Origin are online game stores that millions of people use worldwide. 

The game was shown off to the public on a few occasions, once at Indigenous P.E.I. and another time at the Atlantic Indigenous Tourism Summit. 

“A lot of people gaven’t tried VR before and they were amazed, people were interested in the story about it in the 1600’s before Europeans arrived.” 

King recently attended an Immersive Technology workshop hosted at FilmPEI, 

organized by Up360, a production company from Ontario specializing in new immersive technologies. 

This workshop gives people who haven’t tried technologies like VR the chance to experiment, they are hosting another workshop at the end of the month. 

Harrison Olajas is the C.E.O. and co-founder of Up360, and he says immersive technology is expensive currently, but will become more accessible in the next decade. 

Some of the content his company produces is educational immersive documentaries. 

“There's barriers in terms of cost to produce content, when you’re doing the 3D stuff it’s extremely expensive,” he added. “The average project size for us is a couple of hundred thousand dollars for a custom training simulator.” 

Even with the high costs Olajas said the uses for learning will be a big thing in the future. 

“In other schools in other jurisdictions, the provinces or countries are using it in sciences, in art, biology, chemestry, and there’s all sorts of crazy stuff that you can simulate,” he said. “I always like to say this type of technology enables the magic school bus style learning across all domains, making learnig just fun.” 

Some of the technologies that will be at the upcoming workshop include the Apple Vision Pro, Meta Quest 3 and some 360 cameras such as the Insta360. 

Not only can these technologies be used for the games but also for teaching students about different jobs they may want to try in the future using simulations. 

“Were doing everything from like, showcasing what it’s like to be a carpenter, different trades.” 

Equipment like these will be available to rent from FilmPEI for those who have attended the workshop.  

Rob Riselli, Excecutive Director of FilmPEI says immersive technology is the future of entertainment, and for a variety of industries. 

“It’s another way of telling stories, I certainly don’t want to speak for the youth of today but a lot of individuals of that age bracket, 18 to 35 are very much into the gaming community and gaming is a kind of immersive thing.” 

Not only is new immersive technology being used in the entertainment industry, Riselli said it can be used in many more industries. 

“You’re seeing it more and more in the construction industry, and then conversely I think you’re going to see it more and more in architecture,” he added. “It’s a great tool for the real estate industry to use the tools out there.”  

In addition, Riselli spoke about the possibility of using immersive tech to teach youth. 

“Whether it is to show a young individual, you know, what does a hospital look like, and being able to calm them down so that they understand that the hospital is a safe place, if you could get them in an immersive thing, wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing.