Summary
Mobile games and ICT-based mixed reality tools offer significant opportunities for tourism. This chapter reviews the existing literature in both these areas, and presents a novel way of combining games and virtual reality into an interpretive tool. As a complex, threatened marine ecosystem, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef faces significant interpretive challenges, and almost no new interpretive tools have been developed over the last 30 years. Here, the authors unpack the stages and interdisciplinary approach required to design the tool and highlight how it might fit within the broader scope of ICT developments in tourism. They outline areas of future research, with a particular focus on how ICT might contribute to making nature-based tourism more sustainable, by finding fun, innovative ways to engage tourists in the conservation of some of our most iconic natural assets.

Innovative VR tools and techniques
The design and conceptual development of a game about Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
The game represents simulation of a coral reef, encouraging players to discover the principles of ecosystem complexity and resilience.

VR in education
The game would have three primary goals:
1. Value-add to the return part of the trip, by offering tourists a fun and engaging game.
2. Unpack the complexities of the reef ecosystems, so that tourists had a better appreciation of their experience.
3. Introduce tourists to the threats to the reef and its adaptive management principles to contextualize the hype surrounding the reef’s health and changes in its status.