Hello everyone. My name is Purav, I'm a master's student at the New Media Design Department
at the National Institute of Design in India
The game I'll be presenting today is called Tread Together,
Tread Together is an interactive Narrative gameplay to introspect and scrutinise privilege.
The conception of this game emerged from something that transpired in my own country, India,
during the global pandemic that plunged all of us into unimaginable circumstances. Pursuant
to this very pandemic, a nationwide lockdown was implemented in India that prompted the
mandatory closure of all factories and workplaces. India has an estimated 139 million migrant
workers that are often denied adequate healthcare, nutrition, housing and sanitation.
Transportation systems were initially shut , There was loss of income accompanied by acute shortage
of food. With growing uncertainty about the future, thousands of migrants began walking
back thousands of kilometres with no recourse to travel options resulting in harrowing journeys
back home. The shocking images of migrants forced to walk in desperation showed the enormity
of the crisis.
Subsequently in the same interim, in a conversation about the then ongoing lockdown, a friend
of mine expressed their displeasure at the inability to go to the gym for their daily
cardio on a treadmill. The dichotomy of these two instances and the realisation that we
can sometimes be very oblivious to our own privilege is what prompted the design of this
game.
There are several exercises like Privilege walks that are used as a tool to identify
how individuals accrue privilege or acknowledge its lack thereof . These are contingent on sharing
of personal encounters and proximity to privilege. Through initial research it was observed that
that privilege walks rely on people with marginalised experiences to create recognition and understanding
in the privileged participants of the exercise. Often these moments of sharing can be shame
riddled and possibly create a divide among participating individuals. TreadTogether provides
a better resolution, where these realisations are implicit and independent of undesirable
experiences.
Tread Together is an interactive narrative that uses walking as the primary mode of interaction.
Players must walk or sprint on a treadmill so as to progress within the game. In addition
to walking, players also use two buttons that allow them to navigate various choices, and
in turn unfold divergent outcomes. (1) The game begins with multiple statements
displayed on the screen. Players must either press a blue or red button to indicate agreement
or disagreement with those statements respectively. Responses to these statements provide data
toward self-evaluation of privilege status. (2) Following this, players are introduced
to a context. They must assume a new identity within the game, as a proverbial "rebirth"
to a lower privilege status, in this case as a child to poor farmer in the rural India
and must now make decisions given this pre- condition.
(3) Players walk through the game-world and are informed of key events/occurrences within
the game. Eventually, the game leads the player to a critical circumstance, where they must
make a choice. In this case the player must choose to either drop out of school or work
alongside to support their family and education. (4) With the different choices that a player
makes, certain affordances are also presented to them. Much like real- life, players can
choose to supersede their hindrances in the game by augmenting their capabilities by sprinting
at higher speeds. (5) The gameplay may end in one of two ways,
(i)When the player reaches the end of their narrative or (ii)where the user stops
the game due to exhaustion. In both instances Players are shown a comparative of their current
position in the game(e.g. whether their character is unemployed, has considerable student debt
etc.) and the position they would have achieved had they been afforded the privilege they
possess in real-life, in addition to the time disparity between their assumed character
vs their real identity, owing their privilege.
With strict lockdown restrictions imposed in my native city of Mumbai, prototyping and
user testing the game was increasingly difficult. Albeit limited, user testing was carried out
to inform the design of the gameplay and hardware since the conception of the gameplay and the
paper.
Privilege permeates nearly every facet of human existence and yet we seem to barely
recognise its role in what are seemingly impartial outcomes. Tread Together aims at facilitating
the acceptance and critique of privilege in society and explores the modality of a provocation
to initiate conversations and alleviate stigma around the concept.
Thank you.