Jamaica Game

Our Jamaica game is a third person, narrative exploration game, focusing 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.

We are now evaluating the game through our current SVRI-funded Play. Talk. Change. Project before making it and the curriculum/facilitator’s guide publicly available – watch this space.

Our Approach

Why?

Computer games have the opportunity to offer unparalleled immersion, allowing the player to be an active participant within the story as opposed to just watching it unfold. When immersion and story come together within a game, the result is an experience no other medium can match.

Goal

Our goal is to create a game that immerses the player in the low and high moments of the character’s journey, and to increase empathy and raise awareness of child sexual abuse using the interactivity and immersion that only games can offer. There needs to be a seamless blend between the gameplay on one side and learning principles on the other. The player’s total experience is integral to the learning process.

Benefits

Playing a computer game can influence thoughts, feelings and physiological stimulation. These can interact with each other, and through gameplay mechanisms such as achievements or choice-driven narrative, can also reinforce each other. Playing a prosocial computer game can increase interpersonal empathy and, consequently, contribute to improved social interactions.

The Game

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.

Development

The game has been developed by a small team of artists, developers and a game designer. Our games team worked 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, have been used to inform the game design.

Development used the latest Unreal Engine to ensure quality of gameplay. This gives a stronger emotional response to the characters and story and improve the empathetic response.

Implementation

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 have developed 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, once we secure further funding to conduct schools based trials of the game and the supporting scheme of work.

Sustainable Development Goals

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.