Researchers launch video game exploring the effects of confinement

Scenes from 'Quatre apparts et un confinement' © Mathias Hängärtner - An interactive video game created by researchers and students in the College of Humanities (CDH) and UNIL Gamelab, in collaboration with the Initiative for Media Innovation (IMI) and Le Temps, allows users to explore a series of digital narratives that bear witness to the period of pandemic-induced isolation. Would you let your children play in the park? How can you stay focused during your distance-learning course? Who are you going to call to pass the time while semi-confined? People across the world are dealing with these questions, and many more, as social distancing and confinement have become key strategies for fighting the coronavirus pandemic. For CDH scientist and UNIL Gamelab researcher Yannick Rochat, an expert in game studies and digital humanities, a narrative video game seemed like a natural medium for exploring these questions, and how different people struggle to respond to them in different ways. "Video games can convey information as well as emotions. The idea behind this game is to have a testimony to this period in history that has impacted us all. For a newspaper like Le Temps and for a researcher like myself, it is important to document and keep an account of these experiences," he says. On August 20^th, Rochat and a team of collaborators from the worlds of gaming, programming, and graphic design released " Quatre apparts et un confinement " (Four Condos and a Containment): a series of interactive, choose-your-own-adventure stories that dramatize the lives of four fictitious neighbors in the same building.