Sara Estus – Game Ideas (Empathy and ARG)

5 Games that provoke empathy:

• Talk to your plants: Players own a plant shop in the game. As they slowly start to get to know the visiting customers who purchase plants from the shop, they begin a special shelf with various types of plants like the ones each customer has purchased. With each plant being named after the customer. As the player gets to know each customer, the plants on the player’s special shelf will change, the plants can grow beautifully, wither, wilt, or bloom depending on how the customers are feeling. It is the player’s job to make each customer feel welcome and safe in the little plant shop and keep the plants happy and healthy.

• Don’t judge the Book: Players are given a card with a sentence about something that has happened in someone’s life, but it is all completely anonymous. Players then are given various pictures of the people who wrote the sentences and must try to match the people with the sentences. This game is a play on “You never truly know what someone is going through.”

• School Supplies: In this game, players are given $100 and a ticket with the age, grade, and likes of a child in K-12. Players must then purchase items using their best judgment. After purchasing the items and taking them to the school, players get a letter with photos going into the future of how these items have helped the children in need.

• Stay with Me: Players are given a small booklet that tells the life story of an elderly person in a home. After reading about the person, they are tasked with visiting the person and keeping them, a company based on what they know. The goal of the game is to make friends and keep a well-deserving person happy. Extra points if you run some errands, make them a meal, get to know them even more, and visit often.

• Comfort Food: Players are given a recipe card for a meal that someone has written. After buying the ingredients and making the food. The player will then hear the story of why the food was chosen as a comfort food for someone. Bonus points if you make the food and invite the person to join you for the meal.

Wrinkle: Stay with Me and Comfort Food: Though a few of these games are quite easy to implement into real life, I think mixing both games is a perfect way to not only hear someone’s story but also to experience the purest form of love and joy through another person – Food. Players can document their time with their new friends, and share recipes online for other players to enjoy. Fully documenting a heartfelt experience, while sharing delicious food online, bringing impact to culture, the importance of sharing stories, and of course building relationships. Though this could not be considered an ARG, I consider the issue of people expressing a lack of time, money, and resources to come into play – but I would ask players to consider that documenting stories of these people, and their culture is something many don’t do, and making it incredibly important to document regardless of other factors is the importance of the game.