Hakka Kitchen VR game boosts cultural heritage engagement over video

Hakka Kitchen is a gamified virtual reality experience designed to engage users with the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) of Hakka cuisine, specifically the traditional dish of stuffed bitter melon. Developed by researchers Jingle Huang, Yuyao Zhang, Ruyan Chen, and Ray LC, the experience places players in a modeled kitchen where they are guided by a Hakka chef through the physical process of cooking. The goal is to move beyond passive media like videos or books, which fail to convey the embodied, tacit knowledge central to culinary ICH.

In a between-subjects study with 40 participants, Hakka Kitchen was compared to a video in VR that delivered the same cultural information. Results showed that the interactive VR game led to significantly higher sensory engagement, imaginative engagement, positive affect, and willingness to transmit awareness of the culinary tradition. Notably, the cognitive load of performing the cooking actions suppressed the immediate uptake of concurrent cultural narration, but it created powerful somatic and memory anchors. These anchors fostered a deeper, implicit kinesthetic empathy for the artisan’s labor and cultural background, suggesting that interactive procedures—even when cognitively demanding—can empower cultural awareness more effectively than static content.