During the last year, I worked at a nonprofit sexual trauma agency. I was in the Education/Prevention department, so my job was to facilitate sessions with high and middle schoolers about sexual violence, rape culture, and gender roles with the goal of raising awareness and fostering bystander intervention. We hoped that in doing so, we'd be able to prevent violence by addressing its underlying factors (toxic masculinity, rape myths, power dynamics).
While I was there, I also got involved with the creation of a game that would bring all those concepts together in an interactive way. The game, played via smartphone, utilized mechanics of choice and contained multiple endings. Players would interact with other characters in conversations, choosing their responses and whether to step in when problematic behavior was happening. (Similar to choice/morality based games like The Walking Dead). Depending on their choices, antagonistic characters would either be emboldened to continue acting harmfully, or the player's intervention would help change/stop the behavior. In addition, if the player had spent the game being a bystander and watching behavior happen, their choices were limited to reflect that pattern in the game's end. When I playtested an early form of the game, I was able to get the "good ending" on the first try, and then I played against my values to see what the "bad ending" would be like.
Of course, we ensured that this was age appropriate, but this subject is really heavy and the bad ending was pretty upsetting. With this, the game's aim was to teach students about bystander intervention and the pyramid of violence. Starting with things like comments and attitudes, the game asks players to consider how allowing or normalizing sexist language and beliefs could lead to further violence.
Despite the flaws in some of its writing and gameplay, I was happy to see a game that was attempting to use interactivity to impart knowledge and call players to make individual change. Our reading today reminded me of my playtesting experience, since I would call this a "serious game," meant for raising social consciousness and changing player behaviors (212). I think this game could also possibly count as a "knowledge game," since it has an educational aim and deals with problems "in the world outside" rather than just in the narrative (215). In practice, the playthrough would take place in high school classrooms with educators from nonprofits there to build on the knowledge given by the game and also offer any crisis intervention needed.
It was our hope that in playing the game, students would recognize rape culture, understand why it's a problem, and work on their sense of personal responsibility to become active bystanders. The game invokes empathy by placing students as an observer in a serious situation, hoping they will realize their ability to help each other. Unlike my lesson-style sessions, this game could actually put them in the action and ask them what they would say or do, and students would get immediate feedback about the effects of their choices. To me, this speaks to the enormous potential of games to inspire change, primarily because I see their interactivity and immersion as an amazing vehicle for encouraging empathy.
Works Cited
Jagoda, Patrick. " Videogame Criticism and Games in the Twenty-First Century."
For more on the pyramid of violence generally used in the sexual violence education/prevention field: http://ccasayourworld.com/get_the_facts/violence_pyramid/
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