Reflections

Abstract

This paper introduces my experimental game prototype titled Corridor which puts public transportation into conversation with survival struggle. As a performative role-playing game experience and experiment, Corridor is about a trip using public transportation, inspired by the Metrobus systems of Istanbul, Turkey. Metrobus in Istanbul is a rapid public transportation system that combines metro and bus implemented in a separate corridor on the highway (Berdiyorov 2020). Besides my own experiences in Metrobus, I utilize the interactions of a workshop that I co-operated at the Interactive Film and Media Conference (IFM22), titled “Listening to Passengers Listening to Stories: Interactive Storytelling” to contextualize Corridor. By building dialogical exchange of stories, participants of the workshop explored the experiences of public transportation users in relation to the survival of the body (Simsek and Andic 2022). Eventually, the conflicts that the participants shared in the workshop resonated with me to build intersections between survival struggles in the wilderness and a trip on public transportation. Survival is the oldest quest of living beings and is assumed as another term for being alive, and more importantly for being in the world. Survival of living beings is closely related to stability maintained in their bodies and for humans, this includes motivation and emotion (Evans 2015). At the same time, beyond simply a life and death matter, “survival invokes a complex bundle of existential struggles, political convictions, and cultural experiences” (Zeilinger 2018, 16). Reading survival from an ecological point of view, life on earth is collaborative survival (Tsing 2015). In metropolitan life, transportation is essential to the everyday commute of people, and this is part of survival. Although transportation systems manifest important aspects of our culture, they also sometimes present issues of conflict through the violation of personal space, privacy, and other harmful and abusive behavior. To overcome survival struggles, it is necessary to take meaningful actions, in games or real life. In the gameplay of Corridor, the participants need to maintain an Energy and Morale level Meter by collecting item cards and playing encounter cards strategically. Encounter cards present challenges such as social interactions between riders, protests about the economic situations, and seasons that are affected by climate crisis influencing the participants’ survival level. The matrix of the points ranging between 0 and 4 comes from nature writer Henry David Thoreau's “necessities of life” which are limited accessibility of food, shelter, fuel (modified as health), and clothing (1980). With Corridor, I intervene in the discussions of environmental humanities and game studies with the creative application of survival in an urban context, public transportation. In the experience of Corridor, the players can find a space to reflect on urban survival from the lenses of riders that include human experience, societal factors, and ecological thinking. Redressing the transportation game mechanics related to movement and mixing them with survival builds a critical reflection on human and nature relations in urban. Looking at and rethinking transportation as survival would light the way towards sustainable cities, and policies of living or moving together.