Thursday, May 22, 2008

Sexual Assault...Game Proposal

My idea for my final project is to do a website catered to Santa Clara students that have been sexually assaulted. I am a Peer Health Educator on campus and have worked closely with Every 2 Minutes and 1 in 4 and feel that people on campus don’t believe that sexual assault happens here, but the truth is IT DOES. The approach I want to take with the website is to offer an interview by someone who was sexually assaulted here on campus and how drastically it altered her life. Also I hope to have the website offer a blog that Santa Clara students can post their survivor stories anonymously or give their name, and also for friends of survivors to be able to voice their worries and feelings. I want students to feel like they can share their story and be heard.

The game idea I have would deal with this disturbing experience of being sexually assaulted. I would have a student be sexually assaulted and then after the occurrence there would be a series of choices. Whether they reported it, told a friend, told a CF. Did they go to the hospital and get a rape kit? Did they call campus safety and file a police report? Did they go to trial and testify against their attacker? Did they go to counseling after? Or did they keep it inside? After each choice the character will have different occurrences in their life that follow those choices. I know it sounds kind of depressing but I think it is important for everyone to know what choices you have and hopefully making these choices in a game will give someone the empowerment to do it in real life.

I also think it would be really cool to have an option in the game where you can be a close friend or family member of the survivor of sexual assault. These confidants play a huge role in the survivor’s recovery and it can be just as draining, painful, and stressful. They would have choices of whether they attempted to force the survivor to speak, broke their trust, or just provided support. What to do if they decide to press charges? Will you do all you can to get them to see a therapist? This can be a very difficult position as a friend or family member and hopefully this game would provide strength and answers to questions of those in this tough place.

If anyone has any ideas for the website please let me know!!!

1 comment:

Bree said...

I really liked this game idea mainly because I must sadly admit that I am one of those people that really doesn't understand how often sexual assaults happen, especially at our own school. I never feel as though I WANT to attend the 1 in 4 or other presentations along that line because I think that it will never happen to me and I don't want to get depressed thinking about it, but getting depressed can help bring you to a realization about the issue and possibly help you understand and become interested in other under addressed issues or even issues that are talked about all the time but never really taken seriously.

For my game I also incorporated the idea of giving the player multiple choices that will affect their life differently and I really like that aspect of this game. Also the addition of a family member or a close friend is really clever, because it is true that in a difficult situation their is an array of people are affected. One thing that I suggested for my game was showing what would have happened if they had picked other choices or have other computer controlled characters that choose what the player driven character didn't, so that they can decide what they think that best choice would have been for them or if they would have done something differently after seeing what the computer controlled characters chose.

Awesome game idea!