Sebastian Uitz and Michael Steinkellner showcased their game, A Webbing Journey, at the A1 Austria eSports Festival in the Austria Center Vienna on May 27, 2023. The booth, featuring two PCs, a Steam Deck, and a Nintendo Switch, offered players of all ages a delightful experience. Valuable feedback was gathered, fueling the team’s determination to enhance the game for future events.

We are grateful for the positive response and eagerly await incorporating the feedback received. With its endearing storyline and unique gameplay mechanics, the game continues to build anticipation for its official release, offering an enchanting adventure filled with exploration and heartwarming quests.

Prejudice and discrimination against immigrants have been a constant presence in Western Europe for a long time, fueled considerably by the refugee crisis in 2015. This project, supervised by researchers from Game Studies & Engineering and Psychology, explores the possibilities of using virtual reality (VR)-based video games to increase empathy and positive attitudes toward the integration of refugees in our society. Virtual-reality games have enormous potential for immersing players emotionally in situations outside their usual experience and in the perspectives of others. The project involves the development and evaluation of a game in which participants go through typical experiences of refugees in a European country and an experimental study that assesses the effects of playing the game on empathy, perspective-taking, and implicit and explicit attitudes toward refugees. We believe that this approach has the potential to open up a new, attractive route for changing people’s attitudes through immersive virtual experiences.

The project was proposed by Judith Glück from the psychology department and Felix Schniz and Mathias Lux from ITEC and accepted for funding within the Ada Lovelace program of the University of Klagenfurt. The project will start in Q3 or Q4 2023 and has a duration of 4 years.