Bitterball Dilemma
Art director and game programmer
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Objective: To create an intervention about Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10 Reduced Inequalities.
I collaborated with Luuk Roovers, Louise van Beek and Stijn Verkade. We all had to pitch, in PechaKucha form, about a self-chosen subject within SDG 10. I pitched about the inequality of how we treat livestock and we ended up choosing this as the starting point of our project.
We found that people didn't want to hurt the animal, but would still eat it without thinking of the treatment it received to be on your plate. With our project we wanted people to see their cognitive dissonance, bridging the gap between the "cute farm animal" and a bitterball. Changing the way they look at their food.
We set up in a park, where the user could come by and we'd give them a beef bitterball as a thank you for playing. While they were eating we gave them the phone with a game on it. They could customize and play with a cute cow. After playing for a bit and creating a connection with the cow, the real intervention would start. The screen would flash with a warning sign that the bitterballs were finished and a siren sound would play. Then their cow would be theatrically snatched away off-screen. We would thank them profusely because now we had bitterballs again and lay a new one down on the plate.
After this we would chat with them to hear their thoughts and explain why we made this. This was my favorite part, connecting with stranger about a shared topic. A highlight for me was when a child played the game, and it had opened up the conversation with his parent about where his food came from.
If I would make this project or something similar again, I would make sure there would be a physical take-away for the user like a sticker or flyer.
A play-through video of the game.
