"Falling Up" Interactive Empathy Game-Story Trailer

Eleven undergraduate students moved into the Meadowlark Hills continuing care retirement community for 4 months and created an interactive empathy story-game using the memories and stories shared with them by residents.

[@carlyl1143]

This is wonderful! It made me tear up at the library.

[@SSArt98]

*_Life is a Ocean_*
*_Love is a Boat_*
*_In trouble water, it keeps us afloat._*
~~
_To all loved ones that have passed,_
_My memories of you will always last._
_In my head & in my heart,_
_I swear these memories, I will not part._
*_Truth, Peace, Freedom & Love2ALL™_*
*James*
5/30/2015
2:32am

[@dmmatter]

This 'game-story' reminds me of The Stanley Parable. As such, I want to say that I think that video games and interactive media have a real ability to bring to life the lived experience of so many people, in a way that isn't possible in any other format. It is one thing to read about an ethnography and quite another to go through the motions (and possibly emotions) of someone else. Especially in those cases where we have a hard time getting the whole picture or there's some sort of break in our ability to empathize (like someone with Alzheimer's). I think that can be clarified by the interaction offered in video games. Even simple projects can communicate a great deal.
Don't get me wrong, these sorts of projects, even the smallest ones, will eat a whole year at least: Models, animation, coding, writing, voice acting, scoring, etc are all time hogs. But I still think it is worthwhile for ethnographers to pursue such projects in order to make available to the public these experiences and the GDP of anthropology. So, I hope to see future projects like this, maybe undergrad anthropology students can team up with the CIS department. If that isn't the case here, I know it has been done with the creative writing undergrads at K-State.

[@shaman1268]

dmmatter I am one of the students that worked on the project and we took inspiration from the Stanley Parable. We had a few undergraduate journalism and mass communications majors, but no expressly creative writing people. I am sure that in the future the assistance that the CIS department as well as other departments from KSU could provide, would be greatly appreciated. Speaking from experience, the many small parts of projects like this are indeed a time hogs.

[@LadyMaltese]

OH. Keep the Kleenex close by.