In my group of Four: Jingyi, Felicia, Qistina, Me, I was tasked to be the objective end goal of the game, while the rest were players.
The objective of the game is to find a dementia patient roaming around lost in IKEA. The patient is physically and mentally lost because she does not know who or where or why she is where is is. She posts updates on her location on instagram story and our players will go looking for her. The players are to help find her and help her find herself.
As the game progresses and the players are looking around for me, there will be game cutscenes uploaded as instagram posts, each post being a piece of the patient’s memory.
We brainstormed really hard to come up with a good idea which would include research and ideas we have learnt throughout this course. The video of Blast theory shown in class strongly influenced our ideas. In the end we settled for an interactive game which incorporates social issues.
The link below is the document to our initial ideas (not the main one):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dR1fVeYFiC0LwoZFrRAGqg_BhD-uSI_o5gPKgAt0NTY/edit?usp=sharing
We did more in depth research on the ideas of DIWO and third space and looked into novel but relatable and easily learn-able methods to share them with the public. The link below leads us to the process of our game: A Lost Dementia Patient in IKEA
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qEvEY-oKnKACENWyvhXUjD5E7eqO_W6S_G8lwoSvuFQ/edit?usp=sharing
I was inspired by SCP-3008, a survival horror in an unending Ikea purgatory
The location choice of IKEA is especially intriguing as it is purposefully constructed as a maze. With the various shortcuts and interconnected paths, IKEA seems to be intentionally created in a way that there is no correct linear path. It leaves people to their own devices to navigate their own path and make sense of their own route. It seems that IKEA’s capitalist intent of making people have to walk every inch of the space before finding a clear exit to suggest some sort of malicious idea of entrapment.
For someone suffering with dementia, this place would be a good parallel of their mind. They are at a loss as to how to navigate it and their sense of anxiety is further heightened as they roam around in circles, furthering their sense of stuckness and lost.
I personally believe that this game is a good way to creating a relatable experience for dementia. As non-dementia people, we struggle to see beyond our own lens and scope of experiencing life, and often cast judgement onto others. Through this experiments, the players can get experience parallels of walking into the patients shoes and garner greater insight.
I was worried about potentially misrepresenting the dementia patient’s persona, and was afraid we would’ve included too much assumptions or cliches to bridge the gap of understanding between ordinary citizens and the actual issue of dementia. However, i can safely say that with all our efforts and research, we have tried our best to include a non-biased, non-judgmental narrative , which isn’t too overly preachy either.
If any mistakes happen in representation, I would like to sincerely apologize. There was no ill intent.
With greater time, I wish we would’ve gotten more time to do more personal research, maybe even interview and personally interact with some youth dementia patients, to get a more unique an clearer insight on how to represent them.