After Us: An Interactive Gaming Experience in a Post-Apocalyptic World
Imagine a world that is barren and entirely deserted, devoid of any living form. A world where humans are nowhere to be found. Our game ‘After Us’ brings you into a sphere similar to this. Through an interactive experience, our aim was to allow users to get a glimpse into our planet after having been struck by catastrophe. The events leading to the catastrophe itself are revealed gradually throughout the gameplay by a team of aliens who have come to know about our planet after retrieving the ‘Golden Records’ in space. The aliens are transported to a lab that was once inhabited by a team of scientists who have been working on new technologies to benefit mankind. The goal of our game was to inspire users to reflect on their attitudes and behaviors related to consuming natural resources through their quest to understand the events that transpired.
We initially drew inspiration from Stuart Candy’s lecture on Experiential Futures for the concept of focusing on a dystopian future. We used theories from the Embedded Design Approach and Persuasive Gaming (referenced from Geoff Kaufman’s research paper), as well as other persuasive design gaming principles such as Intermixing, Narrative Collective Assimilation, Experience Taking, Distancing, and Priming. The inspiration for the gameplay was drawn from the Fullbright Company’s game, ‘Gone Home’. Having no previous knowledge of how immersive interactive games worked, ‘Gone Home’ really helped our group to develop a storyline that was exploratory and could keep users engaged throughout the gameplay. Using these concepts, we devised a narrative that would be revealed to players as they discovered different artifacts hidden in plain sight. Developing this game and the entire process was extremely generative, as the feedback we got from our users while testing intermediate versions of the game and post-completion validated our goals and ideas, motivating us to continue making changes along the way.
Ultimately, we feel that this game has the potential to bring about a change in peoples’ attitudes, helping them think about a more sustainable future. In our future iterations, we aim to develop a web-based version to deploy on the internet for more users to interact with.
To play the game, click on this link.
by Danielle Shoshani, Ekta Verma, Lauren Jablonski, Margot Henderson, Payal Bhujwala.
