The serious game Dignity gets young people thinking about sexual boundaries. In the game, they follow Alysha and Stein, who do not communicate well about this and therefore unintentionally cross each other’s boundaries. The question to the teenagers: where exactly do you think things went wrong?
Maarten will be happy to tell you more
Adolescents in adolescence test their limits in many areas. At the same time, they discover their own sexuality. An exciting period in which they discover and experiment a lot, but also a period in which things can go very wrong. For instance, when an adolescent finds it difficult to recognise his own boundaries – or to make them known to others – when it comes to sexuality.
What does someone mean by a sexy photo via Whatsapp? Does it always mean that someone also likes you in real life? Young people often do not know what signals they are sending themselves and find it difficult to interpret other people’s signals. Where is the limit? Together with GGD Friesland care workers and young people themselves, we have developed a game that makes these kinds of issues discussable: Dignity.
This is how we have tackled itIt was a nice challenge to match the game’s look and feel as closely as possible to the target group’s perception. We let the teenagers co-determine the design of the characters and involved health professionals from the GGD Friesland to select the most pressing topics. Important was that the game would not be preachy, but that teenagers playfully discover how to act in different situations. And especially: how this relates to another person’s wishes and boundaries.
This power-up we have realisedIn the game, you follow Alysha. After a party, she wakes up in a strange bed. She wants to go home as soon as possible, but is missing her things. She searches the house for her clothes, bag and shoes. As she searches, she recalls what happened the previous night and how she lost her things. You see how she agrees with a boy, that she goes upstairs with him, that she doesn’t want to go further but goes on anyway. Both the boy and the girl cross their own boundary and the other person’s boundary in the play. After playing, students can indicate in class where they think things go wrong. Shouldn’t Alyshia have accepted free drinks? Or is that Stein just way too pushy? Even during the testing phase, this produced very interesting discussions among the teenagers. Not about ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ and not preachy, but about acknowledging and recognising different boundaries. And that is exactly the point!
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Cross-continental game development: how does it work and what can we learn from each other? Let’s have a chat about this with Giel Hekkert (8D Games) and Eyram Tawia (Leti Arts). They are currently working on Shkorey, an informative game about sexual health, pregnancy and birth care.
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