“Dark Forest: Critiquing Online Communication in an Art-Game of Digital Monsters” presented by Penney and Lovell
Symposium:
Session Title:
- Games for Change (short papers)
Presentation Title:
- Dark Forest: Critiquing Online Communication in an Art-Game of Digital Monsters
Presentation Subtheme:
- Speculative practices
Presenter(s):
Venue(s):
Abstract:
Dark Forest is an ongoing speculative and critical art-game project exploring how individuals perform, adopt and exploit language online for personal gain post Web-2.0. The Dark Forest theory of the internet describes this cultural phenomenon as a communication game, and we use it as the metaphoric basis for our game design. We see an opportunity to engage players through game mechanics with the aim for players to reflect on how they perform, exploit or engage with language online to navigate social capital. The first iteration of Dark Forest engaged players in an open world built in Unreal Engine 5, where they could construct tweet-like phrases and send them into a dark forest environment. Monsters and elements of the forest environment would respond in different ways to these phrases based on their implicit alignment towards the player-composed phrases and open or close pathways based on their endorsement. We hope that players understand and absorb some of the critiques made by the piece through their interaction. Future iterations of the work, based on reflection after its first showing, will streamline the design so that consequences for players are more explicit and encourage deeper progression.
