An educational role-playing game helping teenage boys to empathize with girls
WINNER 2018
This project was our contribution to the #NowWhat hackaton taking place during one evening and two days at Norrsken house in Stockholm. In collaboration with entrepreneurs, developers, experts within human rights and other designers, our goal was to create innovative solutions as a follow-up on the #MeToo movement.
About the challenge
My team and I were faced with the challenge of redefining masculinity in order to prevent sexual harassment and assault. Together we created the concept Empathize, an educational and interactive role-playing game to help teenage boys empathize with girls. It was great being part of a creative team and fight the stereotypes of today's society, the icing on the cake being that our concept in the end was awarded first prize!
You can read more about #NowWhat HERE.
About Empathize
How it works
The participants are assigned a personal character with a bio of different personalities and backgrounds that might impact how interactions and scenarios play out. When playing the game, the characters will face realistic situations of everyday harassment and abuse that will be played out on the TV screen. Individual thoughts will successively be displayed on each smartphone, giving the participants a deeper understanding of their characters feelings.
The players will decide how their characters will act on the screen, resulting in different interactions and developing the story.
At the end of each scenario, the boys will discuss topics such as what caused the harassment, how they felt experiencing it from a girl's perspective and also learn to prevent it - altogether leading towards a better understanding of what girls experience and feel in such situations.
The game platform may easily be scaled up to include more scenarios also addressing other social issues such as homophobia or racism, giving it a great opportunity to impact several target groups and prevent harassment.
Empathize is an educational, scenario based game concept targeted at boys in their younger teens. It is played in smaller groups around a shared TV or computer screen where each participant has a personal smartphone on which they will see info and make actions.
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