Virtual Worlds News: Holocaust Museum Launching Kristallnacht Second Life Exhibit with Involve

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has cooperated with a game developer to produce a Second Life memorial to Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass," a series of state-sponsored anti-Jewish riots in 1938).

I haven't visited the site yet, but it looks like there's a deliberate attempt to distance the player from the experience, by casting the player in the role of a journalist who investigates a site after the pogroms have taken place.

Involve CEO Drew Stein says the project was a labor of love that Involve executed at cost with contributions mostly from its senior developers and partners. He sees it as an evolution of work that began 15 years ago in museums experimenting wiht large-scale environmental graphics, only now the environment and the graphics are virtual.  The 3D, immersive nature, though, provides a more visceral experience, he says.

"That's one of the things we learned from the kids we worked with a year ago. There's a different sense of reality," agreed Kevlan. "That's one of the things we're hoping for that the folks that come through will not only learn more about history, but absorb it differently. When you go through the streets and see the kiosk or the newspapers hanging on windows, you absorb it. The thing for us is to how to do this without trivializing it or making it feel gamelike. You don't want them to feel like they were there, because they weren't, but that they'll know something more."