Intellectual Production #5: Rules, Norms and Values in Play
A challenge our group faced with our game design was how to communicate the value of empathy – an important value to have during a pandemic. Our original idea is to have players control a healthy character during COVID19 trying to avoid people spreading the infection by using strategies such as social distancing and collecting/wearing personal protective equipment. Our objective for the game was to help demonstrate the difficulty in following proper protocols as well as the challenge of making decisions regarding mental health that may be mutually exclusive to a character’s physical health. Our reflections led us to Frasca’s statement that “spectators get immersed into the stories and lose their ability to take a critical distance from what is happening on the […] screen” and this may cause the player to view those suffering from COVID19 as the “villains”. We felt this may possibly dehumanize them or remove empathy for them.
We found the statement made by Belman et al regarding empathy and the economic crisis poignant in how “[t]he crisis, which affected the lives of so many people around the world, gave the project a greater immediacy and emotional charge.” We began to brainstorm ideas on how to generate empathy and came up with the idea for a second mode of play for our game. This second mode would have the player take control over someone suffering from COVID19 who, as a regular person with everyday needs, may be in the unfortunate position of putting others at risk. Our hope is that this new perspective would achieve the result Frasca shares of “constantly reminding the spectators that they were experiencing a representation and stimulating them to think about what they were watching.” The altered experience this second mode could cause our game to “guide discussions and serve to explore alternative ways of dealing with real life issues.” (Frasca)
Working through our game development, time constraints may limit our ability to prototype a second play mode but it is new avenue our group is passionate about and it will be included in our full game proposal.
Belman, J., Nissenbaum, H., Flanagan, M. & Diamond, J. Grow a Game: A tool for values conscious design and analysis of digital games. DiGRA 2011 Conference Proceedings.
Frasca, G. Videogames of the Oppressed: critical thinking, education, tolerance and other trivial issues.