Grayscale: MIT Group Design Game That Gets Players To Reflect On Sexual Misconduct In Workplace
MIT launched Grayscale, a game reflecting on workplace sexism. Play it online: Grayscale, just log in, reply to messages in your inbox, and don't forget to look over your email notes!
The Imagination, Computation, and Expression Laboratory at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has released a new video game called Grayscale, which is designed to sensitize players to problems of sexism, sexual harassment, and sexual assault in the workplace.
According to MIT News, the game also addresses many of the themes brought to the fore by the recent #MeToo movement.
In Grayscale, players take on the role of a recently hired Human Resources manager and must navigate ethical tensions around sexism.
"Players are granted agency through a streamlined, aestheticized interface made to resemble a corporate e-mail client. Over the course of an in-game week, players will read and respond to e-mails from co-workers with varying outlooks in a toxic, melancholy workplace," said a statement from CSAIL.
D. Fox Harrell, the lab's director, and students in his course CMS.628 (Advanced Identity Representation) completed the initial version of the game more than a year ago, and the ICE Lab has been working on it consistently since. But it addresses many of the themes brought to the fore by the recent #MeToo movement.
The game is built atop the ICE Lab's Chimeria computational platform, which was designed to give computer systems a more subtle, flexible, and dynamic model of how humans categorize members of various groups, said an MIT News report.
"You're playing the role of an employee of a corporation called Grayscale. It's a kind of melancholy place: Everything is gray toned. The interface looks like a streamlined email interface. You're a temporary human resources manager, and as you play, messages begin coming in. And the messages from other employees have embedded within them evidence of different types of sexism from the Fiske and Glick social-science model," Mr Harrell, a professor of digital media and artificial intelligence in CSAIL and Comparative Media Studies/Writing, told MIT News about Grayscale.
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