Game Narratives

Chapter 1: Lost in The Flood

In this opening chapter, we highlight how important issues like climate change are often drowned out by attention-grabbing but inconsequential tabloid entertainment news. In this instance, we ask our player to spot the three climate-related articles amid this flood of digital content with the visual clues we give out.

Chapter 2: The Soup and Van Gogh
The second chapter focuses on a famous climate protest: the Van Gogh soup protest. By analysing the initial public response, examining the protest’s portrayal in the media, and drawing from historical instances of radical protests, we aim to uncover reasoning behind the protest, its impact on the national discourse, and the attention it garnered across the media landscape. In one section, we explore the omission by the media of the fact that the painting was protected by safety glass, a fact the activists were aware of. This omission drove much of the rage directed at activists, at the same time, without it, the story would have been unlikely to gather the attention it received.

Chapter 3: Addict Factory
Chapter two naturally leads to the question of why? Why is our digital landscape such that only an act such as the Van Gogh protest breaks through for more than a moment? This chapter seeks to answer that question. We illustrate how our online world contributes to echo chambers, extremism, and addiction, touching on manipulative UX/UI designs crafted by tech companies, the attention economy that dominates discourse and the commodification of human weaknesses, turning us into products rather than customers.

Chapter 4: The Spiders in The Attic
The Spiders in the attic focus on the influence of lobbying bodies and the ultra-wealthy on the media we consume. In particular, it discusses the demonisation of activists and the normalisation of violence, both from the public and the police, against them. It presents the interconnection of lobbying bodies, politicians, and press through the imagery of spiders languishing in a dusted attic, each spider revealing another layer of influence.

Chapter 5: Zooming Out of Our Paper House
In the final chapter, we zoom out from the media landscape the game has navigated throughout its run to witness the future that looms if we fail to act. Flood water rises to consume a city, paper houses dissolving into a wall of water. Players explore their city decades into the future to search for tangible local effects of the potential breakdown of climate systems with a 4°C (7.2°F) rise in global temperatures by the end of the century. By studying scientific predictions and translating them into tangible imagery anchored in specific, recognizable locations within a familiar city, we aim to illustrate a graspable future for the player that could potentially be prevented from happening.

CTA: A Note of Hope
In the final section, we will give out our reasoning on creating this game and useful resources to encourage the player to take some form of action to push back against the escalating climate catastrophe, calling for hope and action rather than division and doom.