Essential workers: A multiplayer game for enacting patterns of social interdependency in a pandemic

Abstract

In order to understand a pandemic like the COVID-19 crisis of 2020, we have to keep in mind larger patterns (e.g., information visualizations such as charts), and individual perspectives (e.g., interviews). However, it is challenging to connect these larger patterns with lived experiences. In this work-in-progress paper, we argue that interactive digital experiences such as games have the potential to bridge this gap by allowing players to explore the pandemic at multiple levels of abstraction. We present Essential Workers: an online multiplayer game which situates players as one of four workers?Nurse, Grocery Worker, Office Worker, or Delivery Driver?who face difficult dilemmas as they live through three weeks of rising infection during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through a core cooperative game mechanic, Essential Workers seeks to tie the constraints and choices of the individual to the health of their communities, and to simulate some of the interdependencies that keep our communities functional during the pandemic. We aim to illustrate our approach to key challenges commonly faced by designers seeking to model the entanglements of the individual and society.