About Civilité

The Game

Welcome to The French Revolution. The year is 1815. His majesty King Louis XVIII has been restored to the throne and the usurper is safely under constant guard as the emperor of a tiny island by the name of Elba. A semblance of peace and calm has finally returned to Paris. It has come to our attention that you are enmeshed in a deep web of temptation and intrigue, perhaps without your knowledge. You have safely navigated through the treacherous political waters thus far, but we sense dangerous unrest in the air. Your choices constitute the decisive actions in the days to come …

Civilité is a pervasive game: a type of game, similar to live action role play and alternate reality games, where the primary way to play the game is not to sit in front of a tv, computer screen, or table, but to interact with other players in real world locations. Players take on fictional roles and explore a fictional world based in part on 19th century France and set on MIT campus. Gameplay consists of listening to audio mp3s that contain puzzles for players to solve, which reward the player by giving them more information about the fictional world; receiving in-game objects, such as paper documents containing information about the game story and in-game characters; choosing which other characters to anonymously pass in-game objects to; and participating in group performances of in-game scenes in public locations.

Drawing inspiration from radical cartography, MIT campus is redrawn as a fictionally re-imagined Paris during the French Revolution. This aristocratic world, dominated by the rising complacency of the powerful bourgeoise, draws players into a web of temptation and intrigue. Dangerous and shifting political alliances make surviving — let alone achieving and maintaining stability, wealth, power, and status — a daily challenge. Over the course of the game, players and game masters collaboratively construct a narrative describing the ways in which the game's characters choose to deal with their treacherous situation.

Les Justes

About

The Research

Civilité is part of a research study that supports a Comparative Media Studies Master's Thesis at MIT. Using a research through design methodology, Civilité investigates game design strategies that encourage players to reflect on ethics and the relationship between ethics in real life and ethics in games. Many contemporary games fail to provide players with meaningful ethical choices or encourage players to reflect on the ethical implications for the actions they take in-game. Civilité uses ethical game design put forth by leading game designers and researchers.

About

The Researcher

Michelle Moon Lee is a second year graduate student in the Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. She studies and designs games that encourage education, collaboration, social justice, and critical thinking. She is a researcher and game designer for The Education Arcade, a research group that explores games that promote learning through authentic and engaging play. She is also part of Quilted, a web & games coop that provides design, development, and consulting services to social justice and non-profit organizations. She is enthusiastic about developing websites and games that are accessible, well-designed, and support social justice. She enjoys programming of all shapes, collaborative design, and creative solutions. Her background is in computer science and she works primarily with Drupal, Ruby on Rails, WordPress and various game toolkits.

About

The Team

Civilité would not have been possible without the hard work and support of the following team of incredibly talented individuals. Background research and design took place through an independent research effort directed by Scot Osterweil during the Fall 2008 and Spring 2009 semesters. Game design and development took place in a Comparative Media Studies group independent study led by Scot Osterweil during the Fall 2009 semester and IAP 2010.