Vertically Integrated Project
Peaceland: Choose Your Memory
Goals
Do you want to work on a video game that has an important social message? A peacebuilding game that shows players the consequences of their decisions without judging their actions? If yes, we’d love to have you join us as we continue to design, develop, and create Peaceland with a collaborative skilled team.
“We remember in order to give meaning to the present and to gain power over the future”
Video trailer for Peaceland: Choose Your Memory
Our Story
The concept for this video game project began during the faculty leader’s 2022-23 Fulbright Scholar grant in Kosovo where she taught and led RIT Kosovo students on a two phased PeaceTech survey project. Students asked locally led peacebuilding organizations about how they used digital technologies to communicate their messages focused on bridging ethnic divides, gender, and youth. It became clear that in addition to using social media and other digital platforms video games are increasingly viewed as ways to engage youth in peacebuilding activities in Kosovo and beyond.
The content for this project is drawn from the faculty leader’s earlier research and work in early post conflict environments, recent observations, international collaborators, local external collaborators
This ongoing project is the prototyping phase. It builds upon two 2024 Brainstorming Workshops and a full time RIT in person IGM student co-op. The workshops, funded by PCCE (Partners for Campus Community Engagement, https://pcce.org) were collaborations between UR students, M.K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, and RIT students to begin developing game characters and stories. RIT Kosovo students who were in Rochester participated in these workshops.
Phases: The Discovery Phase, completed in Summer 2024 by a 19 member Summer Co-op team (designers, narrative led by a UR student narrative designer, UI/UX, concept artists, developers) drew upon workshop results to design and develop a game demo. We continued our contact with RIT Kosovo students. The 2024-2025 phases have focused on: Fall 2024: Reflect, Reevaluate, Reset project goals based on RIT Summer 2024 Co-op); Spring 2025: Revised game to 2D, built prototype, and first new playtest; Summer 2025: Designed, developed, a second game playtest based on the Spring game demo; Fall 2025: Continue designing and developing prototyping phase. Spring 2026 and Summer 2026 will continue final prototyping phases.
Issues Involved or Addressed
Our game: When one war ends, can we prevent another?
“Peaceland: Choose Your Memory” is a role playing video game set in a fictionalized country recovering from a conflict that took place 20 to 30 years earlier. The game begins when a player enters a museum and chooses a memory linked to a character in the present. The player must make seemingly small decisions as they face a series of challenges drawn from real memories and factual events as they advance to the next level in the present. The intended and unintended consequences of their choices are revealed at the game’s end. The goal is to reach “Peaceland” where they reap rewards from a harmonious and prosperous country. Failure sends them to a country where the perpetual destabilizing threat of conflict is the norm.
Our game design builds upon these key principles:
- Choices matter
- Don’t judge the player
- Keep it authentic
Methods and Technologies
How it Works
Post conflict generations are caught in the middle wondering how they can acknowledge the past without sacrificing a hopeful future. How we transmit memories after the end of violent conflicts sets the conditions that help youth build inclusive peaceful futures or ones that divide and harden ethnic divisions. This open access, fun to play video game offers a nonjudgemental space for players who may not otherwise engage in peacebuilding activities to self-reflect about:
- Their attitudes toward others they perceive negatively,
- Intended /unintended consequences resulting from their small decisions
- The important role they play in building a peaceful future or returning to conflict.
Workflow Goals
Each team utilizes agile development, a design/development methodology that makes game software development more people centered by working in small interdisciplinary teams that prioritize communication, playtesting, feedback, revision, implementation, iteration (repeated design, test, evaluate).
- Lessons Learned from each group sets up the next team’s goals.
- Key lesson: Keep within scope and playtest often.
Each team organizes sprints (days, weeks, months) with specific goals, and a
- Focus on communication
- Daily/regular stand ups,
- All team weekly meetings;
- Detailed documentation,
- Input/Feedback led workflow.
Playtests, data collection, workshops, conferences will occur throughout each semester and summer. Lessons learned from each phase are incorporated into the next iterative phase which helps us make significant progress in our current pre-prototyping phase.
Workflow expectations are adjusted according to students predetermined level of participation and workloads.
Academic Majors / Major Area of Interest
Your Role
You will utilize your relevant expertise and experience to collaborate with and work in interdisciplinary, cross-functional teams to design, develop and build upon previous work. to continue bringing our game to the next narrative, art, design, and development level and contribute toward producing an interactive, functional, scalable experience for players to explore the complexities of pursuing peace in post conflict environments.
Earn academic credits, co-op credits, other options
Flexible 1-3 credit hours offer students opportunities to participate on a part-time or full-time basis according to their needs and requirements for each project phase. Each credit hour will equal approximately 3-4 hours per week (12 hours for 3 credits).
Academic credit can apply honors program and independent study. Qualifies for Co-op credit.
Students can continue in each phase of the project to accrue credits. Every effort will be made to accommodate students with the desired interest, experience, and skills.
Students should consult with their advisor and/or program coordinator about how this project can apply toward their graduation requirements. Open to international RIT students from Kosovo, Croatia, Dubai, China.
Expertise/ Skills/ Academic Interests
This project will utilize a wide range of methodologies, skills, and technologies including (but not limited to):
- Interest in creating social impact games, serious games, video games that are fun to play and convey a serious message
- Ability to work in a team with international contributors, fact checkers, play testers
- Knowledge and experience in writing and designing narrative dialogue for an interactive fiction-based 2D video game
- Knowledge and experience in design, development, and asset production for 2D video games for PC and mobile devices
- Creative skills in concept and technical art, narrative design and worldbuilding, music for games
- Technical skills in Unity 6, UI/UX, programming, coding, sound design and engineering
- Ability to research and critique work from earlier project phases and relevant video games
- Application of serious research standards and do-no-harm principle when using publicly available but sensitive memories. Knowledge of and/or experience in post-war environments is desirable but not necessary.
- Experience in conducting play tests is desirable but not necessary
- Ability to work on web design and development, create video trailers
- Ability to carefully document all work to pass on to the next team.
Relevant majors and minors from which students may be interested include, but are not limited to:
- All computing fields (e.g. game design and development, new media interactive development, web and mobile computing, software engineering)
- Game art and design
- Game research
- Film and animation
- Digital media arts and technology
- Sound and music design
- Social science majors especially those who focus on national and international politics, history, peacebuilding, conflict
Regardless of major, all students should have a strong interest in designing/developing meaningful interactive experiences. They should also have a background in team collaboration and in the skills and technologies relevant to their intended role in this project.
Related Projects
Digital Pathways for Peace: https://www.peacedirect.org/digital-pathways-for-peace/
Games for Change: https://www.gamesforchange.org/
Serious Games Conference: https://seriousplayconf.com/
University of Toronto Mississauga, ON, Canada
Games For Peace: “pioneering the use of Video Games for fostering dialog and trust between young people in conflict zones” https://www.gamesforpeace.org/
CRISP- https://crisp-berlin.org/
Gamified approaches to conflict transformation and civic education (Berlin, Germany).
Welcome to the Digital Peacebuilders Guide
https://cnxus.org/digital-peacebuilders-guide/
Build Up video (short): “We transform conflict in the digital age.”
https://youtu.be/xRZiglaia38?si=HDB0pHU300hYbnAI
Digital Peacebuilding Guide (Build Up)
https://howtobuildup.stonly.com/kb/guide/en/digital-peacebuilders-guide-X49wcx4IFi/Steps/1469015
Digital Peacebuilding Toolkit (Build Up)
Build Peace 2023 Documentary
https://youtu.be/TEJkOu8-XSg?si=9NTo1XkoypCy3QhB