Mobile Phone Game Designed to Help Students Deal with Culture Shock

Academics at the University of Portsmouth have developed a new mobile phone game that is designed to help international students cope with culture shock and university life in Britian. It includes such moments as going to the pub and public displays of affection. The game is called "C-Shock", and was developed by Nipan Maniar, who himself experienced the culture shock of arriving in the UK from India as a student five years ago.

Nipan says that the game will act as a "mobile mummy" or "e-mother" for new international students.

"I thought it would be great to have a learning vehicle or device to help people overcome the culture shock because if you have not experienced such things before, it's hard to know how to react or behave appropriately," said Nipon.

Along with his research assistant, Dr. Emily Bennet, Nipan developed the prototype of the game after consulting with the University's International office and the British Council. The main character in the game is an international student who has just arrived in the United Kingdom for the very first time. The objective of the game is to reduce the characters culture shock rating from the default 100 to zero by performing a series of tasks that introduce culture shock-inducing incidents and images.

C-Shock is in its final stages of development, and is expected to be available for download from the University of Portsmouth website later in the year.