In Collaboration With: Center on Violence Against Women and Children
Project Date: Fall 2019
This game was created as a roleplaying activity to help students better understand how to help survivors of economic abuse. Students roleplay as a social worker to recognize signs of economic abuse and learn about the resources that are available to help. There were 6 total games made for this department. The ones shown are what I have permission to share.
As you can see in the gif, we had a simulation type game where the students would role play as the counselor talking to Lina to help her. This was part of a class module where students learn what economic abuse is and how to talk and engage with the survivors. Your goal is to work with Lina and properly converse with her so that she starts to trust you. After you’re able to gain her trust, she will start to disclose a few instances of certain types of behavior. You as the student would identify these behaviors as different types of abuse and gently guide her to understand the resources available to her.
The game puts the player in the seat of the counselor. Watch what you say, because any inappropriate or incorrect answers will diminish Lina’s trust in you. If the trust meter runs out, Lina will leave and you would have failed to help her.
This game serves as a simulation so students can put their skills to the test. These skills would have been cultivated in their course work. This game is a practice run and signifies the importance of professionally watching what we say, how we say it and the impact it may have on the recipient.
My role in this game was mostly as helping our lead game designer with scripts, gathering content from our stakeholders, fixing formatting, testing, fixing alignment, and support. This was while I was still a new as a junior producer and level designer.
I loved helping our lead with anything that they needed during development and often help chase down our clients for sign off on different scripts. I also worked marketing this game to different departments at Rutgers New Brunswick as well as Rutgers Newark.
This was my first taste of working on a serious game. It really opened my eyes to what kind of topics games can cover and underlined the importance of fine details and how they make the player feel. It was a great learning experience for me while I was young in the industry.
