January 22 – 26, 2024
Composition Box Workshop:
On Monday, based on the brainstorming ideas we had made the previous week, we drew a poster and brought it to the composition box workshop. There, we collected some questions and suggestions from our peers, and saw what processes other groups had followed.
Chatting with student who worked on Games for Change project in the past:
Harry worked with G4C for the 2023 festival, and his team’s project was Netalius. For the 2023 Festival, G4C also focused on the UN’s SDGs as a theme, yet with a more specific platform, which was XR interaction. We asked about the topic of their project and how they went through the brainstorming process down to the specific topic. It had been a hard time for Harry’s team to decide on which topic to focus on among the three potential ideas. They eventually chose the harm of light pollution on birds, mainly because it was more inclusive towards potential audiences, as anywhere in the world there would be birds and some level of light pollution. The other potential topic of sea turtles seemed less immersive for some guests, as their living area might be far away from the sea. This was a huge takeaway as we further considered our idea.
Instructor meeting:
We presented our initial research on 6 UN’s goals to Dave and Chris on Wednesday and received the suggestion that we should pick the one we were most passionate about and focus on that before the transformational workshop in the afternoon.
Transformational Workshop:
Our group attended the transformational workshop with a focus on Goal 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions. We learned about the transformative design process. During the workshop, we tentatively confirmed our high-level purpose to encourage individuals to seek information from different perspectives and be willing to contribute to decision-making in the community. Additionally, we focused our audience on educators and game designers who had some prior access to our topic. Finally, we filled out the transformational framework.
Work on Transformational Framework:
Following discussion about game play:
Our concept is inspired by a contentious principle within the legal system: the necessity of providing legal representation to those accused of crimes. This stems from the fundamental requirement for a structured process to gather evidence, ensuring that an individual is considered a suspect rather than a criminal before any formal adjudication.
With less flexibility, we became the host, the facilitator, or sometimes the actor in recreating societal timelines.
Participants were immersed in roles and engaged in scenarios, such as a dispute between two high school students that gained attention online. The audience had the opportunity to observe, interact with, and influence the unfolding of these incidents based on their decisions, by collecting information and offering the information they had.
Starting with situations that closely resembled the participants’ daily experiences, the narrative gradually evolved to culminate in a major event with substantial social implications, in order to relate to the UN goal.
Our goal was not to judge the correctness of decisions made by the participants. Instead, we aimed to provoke reflection by presenting the consequences of their actions, encouraging them to contemplate the impact of their choices and encouraging them to seek information before making their choices.
Team name:
After 3 times iteration, we finally settled with an awesome name Sheryl came up with: UNsolved.