Bytes

Combining shark research with games design

In 2021 I undertook a Master of Research in Computing Science. I based all my modules around the principle of combining wildlife research with games design, culminating in my final project – Bytes: Human behaviour in an interactive simulation of great white sharks hunting cape fur seals.

The basic idea was simple: use Unreal Engine 4 to create a videogame based on the environmental conditions under which great white sharks hunt cape fur seals. Why? Well, for a few reasons.

On the one hand, I was interested in how participants would adapt their hunting strategies in response to environmental conditions and whether these behaviours demonstrated any similarities to those of the actual species. On the other, I saw this as potentially being a first step in using games design to better educate people on how sharks behave. Games are a uniquely personal medium and to my mind, present considerable potential in how we can create empathy between players and the denizens of games themselves.

Despite barely scratching the surface on many of the subjects involved, I achieved a Distinction for the project.

For more information and a detailed write up about the results, please visit The Shark Dev.