Team Sagittarius – “We Are Fine, We’ll Be Fine”

“We Are Fine, We’ll Be Fine” is an auditory and tactile experience played on a wooden game board exploring people’s stories about marginalization, oppression, and the navigating hope for the future. Participants unravel stories of struggle and hope by holding hands with each other while touching the board. As they progress towards the centre of the board, more stories emerge.

Too often, games and art dealing with social justice and identity politics aim mainly to make others understand, but what about those of us who experience it every day? We wanted to create an experience that recognized these issues but did not belittle nor trivialized them (as is always the danger when creating a game-based experience). We wanted to show these issues as it exists now – the real moments as told through the voices of those who experienced them.

One of the goals of our project was to provide an interactive experience amplifying the voices of “the unheard”. We focus on the underrepresented members of society (touching upon stories of feeling like the “other” because of one’s gender, sexuality or race among others). We wanted to create a space where players would actively listen by searching and unlocking these stories (though the wooden board and using each other as “interfaces”). We not only wanted to emphasize these stories but we also wanted to deliver them through meaningful interactions fitting the game’s themes. Through countless iterations, we ended up with a wooden board and the act of holding hands – focusing on the senses (predominantly touch and hearing) to amplify the emotional response of the players. By rethinking how we tell these stories (i.e. by using games and alternative controllers like our bodies as “interfaces”), we believe that this can lead to unique player experiences offering an inward-looking moment of introspection and an intimate shared experience.