Game recognize game: performative archives and alternate reality games

This dissertation is a combination of a transmedia alternate reality game, called The Resisters, and a written monograph. I developed The Resisters through participatory design with local youth in Providence, Rhode Island, about local people of color’s activism and social movement history. The Resisters’ game-based learning utilized intrinsic motivations and the desire to play in order to develop research and game design skills while increasing culturally relevant information about local history of activism for the game designers and the game players. Alternate reality games (ARGs) are unique from the isolationist tendencies of other interactive games as an ARG is an interactive drama played online and in real world places where people come together both online and in the real world to form collaborative social networks in order to solve a challenge that would be impossible to solve alone. ❧ The Resisters game was designed from physical and digital archival research and was played through an online interface, social media, and in real world locations. This dissertation addresses issues of contemporary archives by identifying The Resisters as a prototype for how to make use of physical archives and transform documents into a publicly accessible and interactive online format. The written monograph investigates (1) the limits and possibilities of archives, (2) exploratory game design and game play with youth designers and college student game players, and (3) pedagogical opportunities for civic engagement in higher education using a culturally relevant game. Using ethnographic methods, I determine factors for an alternate reality game to bring together college students and community members in equal collaboration. ❧ The theoretical frameworks of this dissertation position community-based research as an exercise in collective intelligence and reimagining the past in order to collectively determine the future. Furthermore, this dissertation examines young people’s intersecting and emergent race, gender, sexuality, and class identities as well as how interactive game play translates into real world engagement in social issues.