A still from a prototype game/quiz that puts players in the “driver’s seat” in an evacuation scenario — allowing them to test their fire smarts.

Playing it safe: prototyping evacuations through narrative games

The isolated coastal community of Bolinas, CA is uniquely vulnerable to wildfire, with few roads leading in or out of the town. Working alongside Professor Tom Maiorana’s CITRIS team at the UC Davis Prototyping Systems Lab, I helped to prototype narrative games to help Bolinas community members play through complex evacuation scenarios and self-assess their own fire smarts.

Narrative gaming prototypes

I contributed two types of games to the project:

• a series of eight fictional evacuation narratives, each a short story about a Bolinas resident who encounters the same fire from a different location (and walk of life). The team turned some of these narratives into an interactive story quiz — prompting readers to evaluate the decision-making of the protagonists and to reflect on what they themselves might do in an emergency. Since the story quiz is prototyped using a “hacked” survey platform, the team can also gather data on existing fire smarts in the community to tailor future interventions.
• a prototype RPG (choose-your-own-adventure) game that I wrote and programmed in Twine — an open-source interactive fiction platform. In the game, the user makes decisions during an unfolding fire event and is routed through the contingencies and consequences of their actions.

my roles

• secondary research + literature review
• narrative game development for fire smarts quiz game
• narrative writing
• interactive fiction writing programming for evacuation scenario game

Cover photo + game illustrations by Tom Maiorana

grants

funded by CITRIS and the Banatao Institute at the University of California

Explore a prototype narrative game below:

https://tmaiorana.typeform.com/to/Fla7T6FM

Schematic of interactive fiction RPG game I programmed in Twine, showing many possible decision-points and outcomes in a hypothetical evacuation scenario.