A game of rhetoric: Creating an Interactive Plato’s Cave with Performers and AI in The Void

Games involve their own special brand of uncertainty. Uncertainty is chosen, an elective experience that adds to the fun and exhilaration of play. Described by game developer Greg Costikyan, games are 'a series of elaborate constructs that subject us to uncertainty - but in a fictive and non-threatening way' (Uncertainty in games, 2013, p.2). We are in need of non-threatening spaces to engage with the very real, often terrifying uncertainties we face in life, everything from hotly contested identity politics to helplessness in the face of environmental change. Like all designers of serious games, I am on the hunt for ways to express the troubling realities we inhabit in the medium of games in a way that is enjoyable in the moment, but also leaves players with something to think about when play is done.