Overview
Games and play create unique spaces for collaboration, collective creativity, and nuanced identity expression. In a world increasingly divided by the polarizing effects of social media, we explore how intentionally designed games can facilitate healthier discourse.
Inspired by image-based storytelling games like Dixit, and interpretive techniques like Tarot and Rorschach tests, Analogia challenges players to make sense of otherworldly scenes and abstract metaphors through the lens of their own lived experiences. The game's supportive mechanics encourage collaborative, nuanced insights, often revealing hidden emotions and surprising memories. The only goal in this game is to allow these surprises to make space for the magical and transformative power of storytelling.
Each printed card deck is customized using a unique AI pipeline which takes as input recorded stories, reflections, and symbols gathered directly from the community for whom the game is made. By translating real experiences and emotions into metaphorical imagery, the AI fosters more empathetic dialogue by inviting players to tell stories inspired by other players' stories. In this way, the project envisions a novel role for AI. Instead of replacing, trivializing, or making the development of relationships more easy or convenient, the AI offers players an alternative way to find connection which necessitates effort, reciprocity and creativity, in line with the needs of authentic relationship building.