Act as Animal in Virtual Reality

Improving animal rights is not an easy thing to achieve. This dissertation takes an entertainment approach to experience stray animal life, with the aim of making people understand the difficult lives of stray animals and be more aware of animal rights. The main outcome of this dissertation is a Virtual Reality game that allows people to embody a stray animal in the game.
First, the game's avatar was created by referring to several articles and interviews with Macanese residents. This initial research informed that a good avatar should include a) clear information about the character, b) unique characteristics, c) the transfer control between human and avatar. Then, I built the background of the game similar to the real buildings and places in Macau. It needed to arrive at the locations of those places to collect actual texture and surrounding images from modelling the graphics into the game. Subsequently, by making the interaction parts. The study would interview some people with different backgrounds to receive different kinds of information about animal cases and the thought of stray animals. Combining some foreign cases from the internet to create some events and special objects makes it more fun.
With the information from above, a game was created with a Macau background. The players could interact with different people or objects by acting like an animal on the street. The main objective of the game is to survive in a harsh environment like a stray animal. Therefore, the players can experience the life of the stray animals.
The resulting game was tested by six players. The testers were generally satisfied with and saw potential in the game, although it can still improve many locations in the game. The game conveyed the feeling of being in Macau and of being an animal. Therefore, I believe it has great potential as a way to share animal rights ideas.