Saatchi & Saatchi Release VR Version of Sea Hero

Following the success of last year's mobile game Sea Hero Quest, Saatchi & Saatchi has developed the concept further and unveiled a VR version - which will also help scientists to understand dementia.

Just like the mobile game, the VR experience will track gamer's spacial navigation so scientists can begin to determine the first signs of dementia. However, the VR game is 15 times more accurate than its mobile equivalent and of course, much faster than research that takes place in a lab.

Sea Hero Quest VR has been developed with Samsung Gear VR, as part of Deutsche Telekom AG's #GameForGood initiative in which the telecommunications company strives to solve some of the world's problems by investing in technological solutions.

We caught up with Deutsche Telekom AG's VP of International Marketing Communications, Wolfgang Kampbartold (WK); scientific director of The Centric Lab and Neuroscience reader at University College London, Dr Hugo Spiers (HS); and Saatchi & Saatchi CD, Franki Goodwin (FG) to find out how well the campaign did in 2016 and why VR was the right medium for its second installment. Click here to download the game for free.

How effective was the game’s launch last year and what did it mean for Dementia research?

Wolfgang Kampbartold: We were absolutely overwhelmed by the response we received to Sea Hero Quest and still are! It generated almost 3 million downloads and was collectively played for over 80 years, collecting the equivalent of over 12,000 years’ worth of similar lab based research.

Dr Hugo Spiers : For dementia research, the impact was undeniable. To put these results into perspective, the previous biggest study for this type of research consisted of only 599 people, making our trial the largest dementia study of its kind in history. From the data results already collected from around the globe we’ve been able to establish the first world-wide, cross-cultural, global benchmark for human spatial navigation paving the way for the development of a new ‘Sea Hero Quest’ based early diagnostic tool at some point in the future.

Franki Goodwin: Nothing else like this is currently available worldwide so as a tool, it is enormously needed. Dementia is the number one global health crisis and it is predicted that 130 million people will be affected by the condition by 2050. With no known cure, the data collected will be used in the development of new early diagnostic tools, as well as influence the treatment of those already diagnosed with the condition. We’re very proud to be able to continue that collaboration with the VR game.

What improvements have been made in this next instalment of the game?

WK: There have been a few changes and additions to this installment of the game which have all been made possible with the move into virtual reality. Our overall understanding of human spatial navigation capability will be vastly improved by the new technology and we will be able to garner results with greater accuracy and precision, meaning the data collected will be much richer.

For consumers, it is a much more intuitive and immersive experience. We’ve also added a functionality meaning multiple player profiles can be created on a device. With up to ten people able to share the VR experience, we wanted to encourage players to share [the game] with their family and friends of all ages.

HS: From a scientific point of view, VR has allowed for the inclusion of an additional experiment which would not have translated well onto the mobile version. The sea creature level that we've added comes directly from the Morris Water Maze experiment developed by Richard G. Morris in 1984 - a widely-used tool to study spatial memory and learning, it has become the gold standard of behavioural neuroscience.

We’ve also been able to add more data capture questions at the beginning of the game collating anonymous age, gender and geographical demographics which will help us expand the understanding of this area of neuroscience exponentially.

FG: The VR game goes beyond a new installment, because it’s such a vastly different gaming experience. The nature of VR allows us to add new, ground-breaking experiments only possible in this medium so we can really expand the scope of the research on spatial navigation. And because it’s closer to the real-world navigation experience, the data is so much more accurate so it will help us validate the mobile data we’ve already generated as well as collect new results. AND you can feed weird sea creatures hot dogs… which is pretty cool!

The initial game was launched on an app; why did you decide to move Sea Hero Quest onto VR?

HS: Whilst the data set collected by Sea Hero Quest mobile is of vast value to science and has facilitated the creation of the world’s first benchmark for human spatial navigation, we saw an opportunity to be able to expand the scope of our research even further.

With VR, we’ve been able to create a scenario that's even closer to real life, which may help to improve the diagnostic by capturing a more natural human response - such as turning around to inspect their environment when players are lost.

FG: One of the key reasons for doing it in VR, aside from the accuracy and addition of immersive experiments, is that the end goal of all of this research is a diagnosis tool. This tool is most likely to take the form of a VR experience because elderly patients won’t need to learn the rules of a mobile interface and can simply wear the headset and react as they would in real life. So naturally we want to work on the platform most likely to be used for the ultimate goal of the project, we hope it means we’ll get to it faster.

Are there any plans to extend on the game’s format in the future?

WK: Not at the moment, however Deutsche Telekom is completely committed to working to create a Sea Hero Quest-based diagnostic in dementia by 2020. That’s our main ambition. At the moment, we’re simply excited about this new phase of the campaign and the data we’re hoping to collate to get us even closer to our end goal.

FG: We do hope to extend this to a diagnosis tool in the future and to be able to react to new discoveries and developments from the data and emerging platforms but at the moment we’re excited to see how the VR community embrace the game and how the data from this game can be analysed alongside the mobile game to advance the research.