Beyond the Digital: Games for Hope, Change and Emancipation

Fantasy for a Post-Pandemic World

**Fig. 1 - “Purposyum, Challengers of Justice.”**

The Covid19 pandemic is not just about a virus; it is a social, economic and cultural phenomenon. The impact that it is making across the globe is severe, and the role of (perhaps even the need for) fantasy during this changing and hyperdigitalized world is more necessary than ever given the important questions being raised about the nature of our cultural consumption. Humans now face an unprecedented need to reinvent social life, alongside their consumption habits and creative practices, in light of the spread of Covid-19, and to find new ways of understanding these shifts in our behaviour and leisure activities.

Non-digital playfulness is one potentially promising way to engage our minds beyond the overwhelming digital modes of quarantine and social distancing we are now obliged to undertake. There is, perhaps, an urge or desire to go beyond the digital in these times of social isolation, rediscovering instead face-to-face contact and activities that favour sociality rather than social media per se. This blog post shows that it is possible to imagine how the current Covid-19 pandemic can provide us with new forms of connection and engagement, rather than necessarily forcing our retreat into the safety of digital platforms - a kind of fantasy for a post-pandemic world.

“Purposyum, Challengers of Justice” is a new card game developed for those willing to engage with inventing another social and political future (Fig. 1). It is a non-digital resource engaged with educating the world for Justice. It is about fantasizing and imagining a desirable future while exercizing narrative skills. As an example of a “serious” or “applied” game (that is, a game designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment), “Purposyum” invites players to engage in the value of time not spent at work, as well as providing players with a critical focus on the ambiguity of the dissolving boundaries between real-life issues such as capitalist exploitation, privacy and identity. Non-digital serious/applied and even “transformational” games are therefore an art form aimed at possible paths towards a post-digital - and altogether more critical - form of entertainment. The main concern of serious games designers is often to connect fantasy and imagination to utopian or critically dystopian worlds as a way of inducing a behavioural and mindful sense, and inviting players to understand evolving socio-political realities. As is often the case with both fantasy narratives and the metaphorical potential of the animated medium too, it is the role of the imagination in making sense of such realities that becomes significant in the objective of these fantasy games. Playing is ultimately associated with activism, engagement and protest.

From the Void of Digital Narratives towards a new Flow of Purposeful Icons

**Fig. 2 - “Purposyum” collaborative design process at the ETEC Parque da Juventude, São Paulo.**

As part of its gameplay, “Purposyum, Challengers of Justice” proposes a sort of “tarot” playfulness that opens a collaborative reading of facts, hopes and lawful references aimed at the creation of new social and political legitimization processes (Fig. 2). Developed after a Call by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and aimed at children from 13 to 18 years old, it is a non-digital tool intended for the creative re-invention of narratives and campaigns for the promotion of a culture of lawfulness. It is a game that therefore “stimulates envisioning problem-solving narratives which counter global problems through the principles of justice.” “Purposyum” is also a platform involved in the animation of networks of hope in justice, media and information literacy, and the artificial and collective intelligence of citizenship, sustainability and diversity. It is to be played offline by small groups (thus reinforcing the kinds of social distancing required by the pandemic), while as a social platform it may evolve into a new social technology of memory and citizenship. As we increasingly begin to pursue modes of life that take us beyond the digital, the processes of projection, inversion and rejection of social values are becoming more important to our social behaviour. This is where a game like “Purposyum” can help.

While digitalization is mainly a battle for audience and attention that enslaves and constrains (promoting a specific form of social and gendered distancing, as discussed among others by Alison Harvey [2015]), the non-digital practice involved in our “Purposyum” card game aims to promote creativity, open media literacies and egalitarian values. These are also a source of concern at UNESCO, as new policies and networks are designed so as to overcome the current “époché” which ensnares children and youth into the spiraling meshes of inifinite audiovisual interfaces and screens, with no clear path towards the collective appropriation of a common hope. “Purposyum” is thus a metagame for media literacy geared towards the build-up of fantasy skills, so that each child or teenager can use the card game as a springboard to new icons of hope and then, change. As a social practice, each and every group of players who take part in “Purposyum” may produce new cards, new images or mirrors of challenges as well as icons of justice. The game might therefore find a home in schools and other learning spaces, as it is a playground that enables new kinds of non-digital civic re-existence. As we move into social distancing and forms of quarantine, the game can also help to support the evolution of new critical social skills and forms of activism (both digital and non-digital, in every conceivable audiovisual and entertainment form).

The underlying challenge of such non-digital gameplay, as in “Purposyum,” is to bring forward the use of social technologies as expressed in local narratives, media, information and other audiovisual literacies. Freedom, lawfulness, emancipation, sustainable development, peace and love, education and creativity are all important values not captured by scaled-up algorithms for profit. In “Purposyum”, players are invited to share their universal solutions online in a reinvigorated public sphere, engaging both analog and digital content production and distribution so that the “Icons of Justice” become a ballast, an anchor that develops the players’ creative skills (Fig. 3).

The undemocratic and often elitist nature of the contemporary displaying of icons and images in motion (especially in videogames, and massive digital interfaces that rely on digital animation) is to be countered by the “Purposyum” card game. To play with just a few people - and to exercise critical and face-to-face storytelling skills - we believe actually prepares players for a more critical engagement with the digital realm and its many interfaces (games, apps, audiovisual content) that it has to offer. To play non-digital, card and boardgames in the current climate seems to be more valuable than developing a new media literacy that becomes necessary as children and youth are abducted into full-time social media (for profit) platforms that supposedly display their actual, real life memories and narratives. Hopefully this new analog-to-digital flow in “Purposyum” will support not only the overcoming of massive and passive social distancing in these challenging times, but also make room for new forms of playful sociality associated with local narratives and global civic change.

A new role for universities: beyond “home offices” and “distance education”

The expansion of non-digital serious games, such as “Purposyum,” may serve the needs of a revigorated civil society. But it is also a new challenge for and universities to play a more meaningful role in the creation of new images, icons and collective intelligence, contributing to the promotion of emancipatory fantasies in times of threatening dystopias resulting from a pandemic reliance on State, police and the legacy of alienating popular culture. A boardgame (or “jeux de societé”) is a non-digital audiovisual interface designed to connect actual human bodies in real time. “Purposyum” may also be seen as a platform that is animated by new local narratives designed to restore hope and promote change.

Here and now, we must play with our skills to build hope in Justice and fairness in the promotion of social, economic and cultural change. As we play, thus we learn, design and act. Around a table or on the grass of a playground, the outside area in a pub, or in hidden tables in underground cafés. Even in quarantine homes or connecting people under social distancing stress, games can offer the chance and conditions for freedom and creativity.

Justice be with you!

***Purposyum, Challengers of Justice – FREE to download (Manual and Cards) can be found here. More information about Boardgame resources is also available here***

**Article published: June 12, 2020**

References

Harvey, Alison. Gender, Age and Digital Games in the Domestic Context, Routledge Advances in Game Studies (New York: Routledge, 2015).

Biography

Gilson Liberato Schwartz - https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/gilson-schwartz Visiting Senior Fellow at the Department of Digital Humanities, King´s College, London, CAPES PRINT USP Scholarship (2019-2020) and Game Designer for the UNODC/UNESCO “education for justice” and “media and information literacy” (MIL) campaigns. President of Games for Change Latin America. Associate Professor at the Department of Film, Radio and TV, School of Communication and Arts (ECA) and at the Graduate Intersiciplinary Program Rights, Humanities and Other Legitimacies, Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH), University of São Paulo (USP), Brazil. President of the “Games for Change Latin America” initiative (https://www.facebook.com/g4cal/). E-mail: schwartz@usp.br.