GeoMinasCraft: A Serious Geogame for Geographical Visualization and Exploration

This chapter concentrates on the implementation of the geogame GeoMinasCraft and its use for geographical virtual explorations. The game was implemented to study the use of geospatial data for the visualizations of landscapes in a serious game. The users/players can take on an adventure, explore the landscapes, learn about geodiversity, and face different challenges. The game takes us to the City of Ouro Preto in Minas Gerais in Brazil. The city was selected due to its historical significance and socio-cultural values. We used satellite images and transformed them into blocks imitating these real-world landscapes and cities in Minecraft. We tested the game prototype with nine students which gave us the needed feedback for the improvements of the first prototype. This chapter summarizes the game concept, its implementation, and the testing results. We conclude the chapter with a discussion and further research directions.

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