Vertically Integrated Project
Peaceland: Choose Your Memory
Goals
“Peaceland: Choose Your Memory” is a role playing video game set in a fictionalized country recovering from a conflict that took place 20 to 30 years earlier. The game begins when a player, assuming the role of a journalist, chooses a memory linked to a character whose ethnic/religious/racial identity is not easy to identify. The player must make seemingly small decisions as they face a series of challenges drawn from real memories and factual events as they advance to the next level. The intended and unintended consequences of their choices are revealed along with their character’s identity at the game’s end. The goal is to reach “Peaceland” where they reap rewards from a harmonious and prosperous country. Failure sends them to a country where the perpetual destabilizing threat of conflict is the norm.
Students will work in interdisciplinary, cross-functional teams to design, develop and build upon previous work to complete the following.
Primary goal: To design, develop, and playtest a video game that increases empathy, a shared understanding and connection between former enemies in post conflict environments. It will be open source and sent to interested peacebuilding organizations.
Additional game goals: To address the challenges of building peace in post conflict environments where significant tensions remain by:
- Creating a fun immersive experience that allows the player to engage with sensitive subjects in a safe space.
- Giving the player agency to decide positive or negative outcomes on an individual and national scale
- Increasing understanding of the impact memories have on shaping long term peace or conditions that lead to renewed conflicts.
Issues Involved or Addressed
The way past events are remembered by politicians and individuals has been acknowledged by human rights and peacebuilding organizations as a key indicator as to whether a post conflict country is headed toward long term reconciliation or a return to conflict. Separate from politicians who may have different goals, individuals contribute to these trajectories by choosing the way they narrate the past.
The concept for this video game project began during the faculty leader’s 2022-23 Fulbright Scholar grant in Kosovo where she taught and led RIT Kosovo students on a two phased PeaceTech survey project. Students asked locally led peacebuilding organizations about how they used digital technologies to communicate their messages focused on bridging ethnic divides, gender, and youth. It became clear that in addition to using social media and other digital platforms video games are increasingly viewed as ways to engage youth in peacebuilding activities in Kosovo and beyond.
The content for this project is drawn from the faculty leader’s earlier research and work in early post conflict environments and recent observations about how issues of forgiveness, revenge, and justice reappear in the way memories are transmitted with intentions to unify or divide and its impact on post conflict generations 20 to 30 years after the conflict ends.
Methods and Technologies
This ongoing project builds upon two 2024 Brainstorming Workshops and a full time RIT in person IGM student co-op. The workshops, funded by PCCE (Partners for Campus Community Engagement, https://pcce.org) were collaborations between UR students, M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, and RIT students to begin developing game characters and stories. RIT Kosovo students who were in Rochester participated in these workshops.
The Discovery Phase, completed in Summer 2024 by a 19 member Summer Co-op team (designers, narrative led by a UR student narrative designer, UI/UX, concept artists, developers) drew upon workshop results to design and develop a game demo. We continued our contact with RIT Kosovo students.
The next 2024-2025 project phases will focus on: Fall 2024: Reflect, Reevaluate, Reset project goals based on recently completed Discovery phase (2024 RIT in-person Summer Co-op); Spring 2025: Build prototype drawing from discovery and reflection phases; Summer 2025: Begin developing final video game; Fall 2025: Continue developing final video game.
Academic Majors / Major Area of Interest
This project will utilize a wide range of methodologies, skills, and technologies including (but not limited to):
- Interest in creating social impact games, serious games, video games that are fun to play and convey a serious message
- Knowledge and experience in designing interactive fiction-based game play for video games (3D experience is a plus)
- Knowledge and experience in design, development, and asset production for video games
- Creative skills in concept and technical art, narrative design and worldbuilding, music for games
- Technical skills in Unity, UI/UX, programming, coding, sound design and engineering, 3D modeling and rigging
- Ability to research and critique work from earlier project phases and relevant video games
- Application of serious research standards and do-no-harm principle when using publicly available but sensitive memories. Knowledge of and/or experience in post-war environments is desirable but not necessary.
- Experience in conducting play tests is desirable but not necessary
- Ability to work on web design and development, create video trailers
- Ability to work in a team with international contributors, fact checkers, play testers
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Relevant majors and minors from which students may be interested include, but are not limited to:
- All computing fields (e.g. game design and development, new media interactive development, web and mobile computing, software engineering)
- Game arts
- Film and animation
- Digital literatures and comparative media
- Media arts and technology
- Sound and music design
- Social science majors especially those who focus on national and international politics, history, peacebuilding, conflict
Regardless of major, all students should have a strong interest in designing/developing meaningful interactive experiences. They should also have a background in team collaboration and in the skills and technologies relevant to their intended role in this project.
Flexible 1-3 credit hours offer students opportunities to participate on a part-time or full-time basis according to their needs and requirements for each project phase. Each credit hour will equal approximately 3-4 hours per week (12 hours for 3 credits) and can count toward co-op credit as well. Students can continue in each phase of the project to accrue credits. Every effort will be made to accommodate students with the desired interest, experience, and skills.
Students in majors outside GCIS and CLA should consult with their advisor and/or program coordinator about how this project can apply toward their graduation requirements. Open to international RIT students from Kosovo, Croatia, Dubai, China.
Related Projects
This project is in the early conceptualization and prototyping phases. It builds upon two 2024 Brainstorming Workshop collaborations funded by PCCE (Partners for Campus Community Engagement, https://pcce.org) between UR students, M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, and RIT students who began to develop game characters and stories. During a discovery period that drew from these workshops, a game demo for “Peaceland: Choose Your Memory” was designed and developed by an in person RIT 2024 IGM Summer Co-op (and a UR student narrative designer). A significant archive of their work is ready to use for the next phases. Additional collaborators and funding sources are being sought for 2025-2026.
Resources:
Digital Pathways for Peace: https://www.peacedirect.org/digital-pathways-for-peace/
Games for Change: https://www.gamesforchange.org/
Serious Games Conference: https://seriousplayconf.com/
University of Toronto Mississauga, ON, Canada
Games For Peace: “pioneering the use of Video Games for fostering dialog and trust between young people in conflict zones” https://www.gamesforpeace.org/
CRISP- https://crisp-berlin.org/
Gamified approaches to conflict transformation and civic education (Berlin, Germany).
Welcome to the Digital Peacebuilders Guide
https://cnxus.org/digital-peacebuilders-guide/
Build Up video (short): “We transform conflict in the digital age.”
https://youtu.be/xRZiglaia38?si=HDB0pHU300hYbnAI
Digital Peacebuilding Guide (Build Up)
https://howtobuildup.stonly.com/kb/guide/en/digital-peacebuilders-guide-X49wcx4IFi/Steps/1469015
Digital Peacebuilding Toolkit (Build Up)
Build Peace 2023 Documentary
https://youtu.be/TEJkOu8-XSg?si=9NTo1XkoypCy3QhB