We are developing third person narrative exploration games. The Indian game focuses on a young girl, Anju, and explores the different kinds of gender bias that she encounters both at home and at school.
The game has been designed to change attitudes that contribute to violence against women and girls in India. Our aim is to empower young people, to increase empathy and to raise awareness of the causes and effects of gender inequality and gender-based violence.
Anju is a young girl who lives with her bother, Siddhant, her parents, Surekha and Anil, and her grandmother (‘Dadi’). Anju’s best friend at school is Aisha, who has some problems at home.
The game explores different forms of gender bias and how these attitudes affect the people involved. This includes the treatment that both Anju and Aisha experience at school and at home.
The game introduces young people to the variety of ways in which gender bias and fixed gender roles dictate the experiences and expectations of the characters. Through the game players are able to explore how these biases and fixed gender roles can be challenged.
The game is being developed by a small team of artists, developers and a game designer. Our games team are working in close consultation with our India-based research team to ensure the game is culturally appropriate and is target specifically at young people in India. Both qualitative and quantitative research, undertaken as part of the Ni3 project, is being used to inform the game design.
Development uses the latest Unreal Engine, to ensure quality, and utilises motion capture technology to make the characters feel more realistic and lifelike. This will give a stronger emotional response to the characters and story and improve the empathetic response.
The game will be trialled in schools across five days, with students aged between 12 and 16. Each day represents a chapter in the story and each chapter is played for approximately 20-30 minutes. Training will be provided to teachers on how to use the game, and a gameplay tutorial is built in for players as part of the story. The game is distributed on USBs which allow it to be played offline as well as facilitating the collection of anonymous data, to understand the effectiveness of the trial.
We are developing detailed lesson plans to support teachers in using the game as an educational tool. We will provide this to schools for free, along with the game, at the end of the project.
We are currently developing the characters for our India based prosocial computer game. We look forward to introducing you to them soon.
Through our prosocial computer games, the None in Three Research Centre is working to address the UN Sustainable Development Goal 5 in India, by seeking to redress gender inequality in our society.
