Yabusame!!! - Historical Japanese Cross Scroll Meets VR

The progressive advancement of digital technologies offers novel prospects for the preservation and exhibition of cultural heritage assets in day-to-day museum operations. Within this framework, contemporary media platforms like virtual reality (VR) still maintain an element of novelty in public perception, thereby serving as a catalyst to engage individuals in cultural knowledge. Drawing on these assumptions, this paper introduces our serious game, Yabusame!!! - a collaborative endeavor between our team and the esteemed city museum, Hornmoldhaus, developed during the Coding da Vinci Hackathon for cultural data ( https://codingdavinci.de/en/node ). The game, a VR bow shooting experience, creatively imparts the contents of a historical Japanese cross scroll that portrays the eponymous Japanese sport, Yabusame, alongside associated historical and cultural knowledge. The game design encompassed deliberate strategies aimed at optimizing usability and mitigating potential causes of motion sickness, ensuring the practical applicability of the game within the corresponding museum exhibition. This paper unfolds in three parts: firstly, an exposition of the cultural backdrop behind the game; secondly, an exploration of our didactic strategy, game design choices, and our vision for seamlessly integrating the VR game within a museum exhibition; and finally, the presentation of a study we conducted to examine the practical usability of Yabusame!!! in this setting.