The game that I chose to play was Arise: A Simple Story developed by Piccolo Studio.
Link:
http://www.gamesforchange.org/game/arise-a-simple-story/
The story of the game was about a tribal man going through his lifetime memory in a spiritual world after his own burial. The game adopted minimalist design philosophy. There was no text, voice-over, or any other narration throughout the game. The user interface barely existed. There were no parameters of any kind. The game focused on exploration and puzzle-solving based on visual clues. Two of the primary themes of the game were environmentalism and humanity.
The environmentalism idea was conveyed by the key mechanic of the game: environmental control. The character in the game went through different segments of his own memory. In each segment, he had the ability to control different aspects of the environment, such as time, season, and temperature. Compared to a traditional approach of using specific items from nature, such as leaves, branches, trees, mountains, in games, Arise: A Simple Story emphasizes the embodiment of human-nature connections at a spiritual level. The character did not change the environment, but rather emerged with it and used the natural flow of the environment. The design was a great example of values-at-play (Nissenbaum, et Flanagan). The expression of the idea that humans should be a part of nature rather than a modifier or even destroyer was vivid, loud, and clear. Furthermore, the background was set in a tribal society rather than a hi-tech modern society, emphasizing the harmonious relationship between humans and nature.
Humanity was another value expressed by the storytelling. In the game, one of the challenges for players was to collect images of some key events that happened in the character’s life. The character was bullied and marginalized when he was little. Then he found the love of his life, became a great leader for his tribe, went through struggles and crises, and finally, lived a fulfilling life. Compared to the mainstream stories in video games, Arise: A Simple Story emphasized simplicity rather than complexity, resilience rather than aggression, unity rather than individualism, pacifism rather than violence. These qualities also resonated with environmentalism.
Work Cited
Nissenbaum, Helen, and Flanagan, Mary. “A Game Design Methodology to Incorporate Social Activist Themes,” CHI 2007 Proceedings Politics & Activism, April 28-May 3, 2007.