Pick up just about any commercial video game and it's a safe bet you won't find any content thoughtfully dealing with issues of identity and sexuality. Researchers led by MIT postdoc Todd Harper at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab have created A Closed World to do just that. The adventure game, resembling a Japanese role-playing game, focuses on a character's internal struggles when dealing with unaccepting and hurtful family members and friends.
Players assume the role of a young androgynous villager fed up with the oppressive attitudes of fellow residents. You head into the forbidden forest, supposedly home to hungering demons and a village-destroying beast, to be with your beloved, who has already risked everything and left home. Along the way, you confront family members spewing bigoted curses, for example, and have to overcome them using either logic, passion, or ethics.
Harper led a group of interns from Singapore in creating the game, and the research was in part designed to assess the hardships and challenges involved with creating a game with compelling queer content. As GAMBIT's website says, "The result is a game that asks us to carefully consider what we think of as 'normal,' and what is needed to live in the world and be true to one's self."
Harper says the tragic death of Rutgers' student Tyler Clemente, who committed suicide after being outed by classmates, inspired A Closed World. Read more in an interview.
