The GreaterThanGames Lab: Speculat1on
Track:
Games and Simulations
Time:
11:00 – 11:45 am
Location:
President’s IV
Presenters:
Katherine Hayles: Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Literature
Patrick Lemieux: PhD Student, Art History/Visual Studies
Luke Caldwell: PhD Student, Literature
Session Information:
The GreaterThanGames Lab is an interdisciplinary initiative focused on the productive intersection of transmedia applications, virtual worlds, and digital storytelling. The goal is to use the combined allure of game play, virtual architecture and design, and digital storytelling to intervene constructively in real world problems.
Over the past two years, members of the GreaterThanGames lab have been developing, testing, and refining “Speculat1on,” an Alternate Reality Game (ARG) meant to enhance financial literacy and reveal the consequences, through near-future fictional scenarios, of possible outcomes if a cultural change does not occur that values community over shareholder value, the environment over greed, and human lives over profits. The transmedia game enrolls the resources of a wide variety of real-world and virtual platforms to engage players in activities that, on the micro-scale of individual puzzles and problems, embody the dynamics that fueled the economic crash of 2008, and on the macro-level, encourage insights into the real-life dangers posed by corporate greed today and possible ways to contain and control it.