Role: Sole Author, Programming, Hardware and Software
Duration: 16 weeks
Accolades: Jury Special Mention

Overview

 
While ostensibly meritocratic, our society functions on an imperceptible yet undeniable paradigm of privilege. Privilege is an unearned, unasked for advantage gained because of the way society views an aspect of an individual's identity, such as race, caste, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, and language. Privilege permeates nearly every facet of human existence and yet we seem to barely recognise its role in what are seemingly impartial outcomes. Tread Together is an interactive narrative based game that uses gameplay as a tool to help people better reflect on their own privilege and examine how it affects the people around them using a combination of critical and reflective design. The narrative transports players to embark on a journey through an alternative perspective in the game with the express intent of introspective contemplation and scrutiny of privilege as a dominant paradigm in society.

Provocation

Pursuant to the Covid-19 global pandemic, a nationwide lockdown was implemented in India that prompted the mandatory closure of factories and workplaces. India has an estimated 139 million migrant workers  that are often denied adequate healthcare, nutrition, housing and sanitation. With transportation systems initially shut down, loss of income, food shortages and uncertainty about their future, thousands of migrants began walking back with no recourse to travel options resulting in harrowing journeys back home. The shocking images of migrants forced to walk in desperation showed the enormity of the crisis.

Subsequently in the same interim, in a conversation about the then ongoing lockdown, a friend expressed their displeasure at the inability to go to the gym for their daily cardio on the treadmill. This dichotomy in society fuelled by privilege was an indication of how oblivious we can be to our own privilege and how that might affect others around us. This identification prompted the conception of Tread Together.

Research Methodologies

The research for "Tread Together" combined primary and secondary methods to explore the complex concept of privilege. A thorough literature review examined its various dimensions, including social, religious, and economic factors, forming the game's conceptual foundation. Concurrently, primary research involved 14 diverse participants, aimed at understanding perceptions of privilege, introspection on personal privilege, and communication barriers around the topic.

The research employed four key methods:

Focus Group Discussion
Conducted in two groups with 5 members each, these discussions explored the existence and extent of privilege in individuals' lived experiences, including benefits accrued from privileged status and societal mitigating factors.

Privilege Walk
Conducted in two groups with 5 members each, these discussions explored the existence and extent of privilege in individuals' lived experiences, including benefits accrued from privileged status and societal mitigating factors.

Semi-Structured Interviews
Post Privilege Walk, participants discussed their experiences and emotions from the exercise, providing deeper insights into personal perceptions of privilege..

Associative Experiment
Participants responded to generative scenarios where privilege played a role, sharing anecdotal experiences of both benefiting from and being impeded by privilege.

"Tread Together" is an interactive game where players engage by walking or sprinting on a treadmill. This physical activity serves as a metaphor for traversing through life's varied privileges and challenges.

Through simple button interactions, players navigate critical moments in the narrative. Two buttons offer binary choices at key decision points, each reflecting real-world situations where privilege impacts outcomes. These choices shape the player's journey and subsequent encounters.

The game environment is populated with objects drawn from research participants' lived experiences with privilege. This careful selection of visual elements creates an environment where each object carries meaning, grounding abstract social dynamics in physical representations.

Prototyping

The project's development process focused on validating three distinct aspects of the experience:

The first prototype took the form of a progressive web application testing the privilege assessment system. This interactive questionnaire helped refine how players would evaluate their privilege status at the game's start, establishing a baseline for the narrative that would follow.

Technical feasibility was explored through a hardware prototype integrating pulse width modulation for treadmill control. While limited by access to physical equipment during the pandemic, this prototype validated the core interaction mechanism connecting physical exertion to game progression.

The final prototype focused on visual storytelling and world-building in Unity. This phase explored how to represent privilege through environmental design, testing ways to embed participant research insights into the game world through referential objects and spaces. Each prototype addressed a specific uncertainty in the project's development.

Reflection

Tread Together examines how physical experience can make tangible the very real impacts of systemic privilege. Through the development process, the work revealed the power of using game mechanics to translate lived experiences into shared understanding. The feedback from participants pointed to both the difficulty and necessity of confronting privilege in its many forms. This project serves as an initial exploration into how interactive media might contribute to broader discussions about social inequity, while acknowledging the complexity and ongoing nature of this work.