We are developing third person narrative exploration games. Our Jamaica game focuses on a teenage girl, Gabrielle, who lives with her mother, Grace, and her mother’s boyfriend, Johnny.
The game has been designed to inform young people about child sexual abuse, to empower young people to report it, to increase empathy for those who are victimised and to raise awareness of the complex ways in which power and grooming are used to coerce and silence victims.
Gabrielle is a 14 year old girl who lives with her mother,Grace, and her mother’s boyfriend, Johnny. Gabrielle’s parents have been separated for some time and she has no contact with her father. Johnny, moved in to the house five months ago.
Grace works as a waitress at a hotel and is out of the house most evenings. Johnny is kind to Gabrielle, taking her out and buying her gifts. Grace is grateful for the support he gives them, helping to pay the bills and paying for Gabrielle’s school supplies.
Gabrielle has noticed recently that Johnny seems to be singling her out for special treatment. She is starting to feel uneasy taking gifts from him, and wondering if she is at fault for accepting them. He has started saying things to her that make her uncomfortable, especially when he has had a drink.
Through the game, the player follows Gabrielle through her experience with Johnny and explores how it affects her and the people around her. The player must help Gabrielle through this difficult time.
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 Jamaica-based research team to ensure the game is culturally appropriate and is target specifically at young people in Jamaica. Both qualitative and quantitative research, undertaken as part of the Ni3 project, will be used to inform the game design.
Development uses the latest Unreal Engine to ensure quality of gameplay. 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 14 and 18. 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.
Through our prosocial computer games, the None in Three Research Centre is working to address the UN Sustainable Development Goal 5 in Jamaica, by seeking to redress gender inequality in our society.
