Michael Kriegel: ORIENT - An Intercultural Role-playing game

Michael presents a summary of design ideas for the game they are currently developing.

ORIENT stands for Overcoming Refugee Integration with Empathic Novel Technology, and is part of a large European project called eCircus. It uses virtual drama and interactive narratives to teach social narratives, similar to the anti-bullying application FearNot! which was previously mentioned by Ruth Aylett - Michael previously worked on this, and it is part of the same eCircus project. ORIENT builds on some of the team's findings from FearNot!.

The project aims to enhance intercultural sensitivity by changing negative attitudes and actions towards people from other cultures. Its target audience is 14 year olds from the host culture.

Users can interact with characters that are similar to the members of this target group, and stories that are in some way familiar to their culture. The idea is that they will learn appropriate behaviour from their interactions with these characters.

The interactive narrative takes place on a planet inhabited by an alien race, Sprytes. The team spent a lot of time developing the alien culture in detail, before they began work on the story. Their culture is distinct from typical Western culture in some ways - they are strongly hierarchical, with a focus on respect and age; they are collectivistic; they dislike uncertainty; they are highly militaristic. In the game, a group of teenage users have to work together, playing astronauts who have to stop a meteor crashing into the planet.

Each Spryte is an agent, as was the case in FearNot! However, in the earlier application the agents fit into very specific roles, e.g. bully or victim, whereas ORIENT agents are not clearly cast in roles.

The project intends to blend computer role-play with real-life roleplay - the kids have to act the part with each other as well as with the software. Each of the three active users has a different user interface, to facilitate role separation:

• The Wiimote can be used to perform gestures, to communicate with Sprytes in different ways (e.g. gesturing a greeting or apology).
• The Dance Mat is used to navigate the game world.
• The mobile phone is used to select objects, which physically exist and are embedded with RFID tags.

Role-play in a virtual context gives you a safe environment to act out situations in, and can provide automated, personalised feedback to users. Players will interact with the game world and the game characters, and in so doing learn to adapt to the customs of another culture.

The team are now beginning development of an initial software prototype.

Question and answers session:

Someone brings up a comparable game which aims to promote understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The author of that game felt that although he had successfully created empathy in players for the situation, he was concerned that this attitude would not transfer to other situations - to account for this he created specific exercises to encourage this transference.

Michael responds that there were initial discussions about using a real-life cultural conflict as the basis for the game, but as they ultimately chose a sci-fi setting transference is indeed essential. This is a key research question, and they intend to evaluate it. Ruth notes that the project psychologists are still working on exactly how this evaluation will work, but there is the idea that users will have to keep diaries and report to 'space command' at the end, encouraging reflection.