True stories: Storytelling and empathy in None in Three’s digital game narratives

Abstract

Since its conception in 2017, the Global None in Three (Ni3) Research Centre for the Prevention of Gender Based Violence (GBV) has been working to collect real stories about people’s personal experiences of GBV from both victim and perpetrator perspectives. Led by a team of experts from across the globe, these real-life experiences have been used to inform the development of a series of serious, prosocial computer games whose narratives, in-game dialogue and characters are based around this empirical data. This article discusses the translation of these stories into the games’ digital narratives, and explores how their re-telling is fundamental to the success of the games as educational tools for increasing empathy in players and, ultimately, for changing attitudes and behaviours towards GBV. In doing so, it explores the coexistence and fluctuating relationship between digital narratives and the spoken word – whose significance might be seen to book-end the None in Three project as a whole, in its development of the game and in the dissemination of its message about preventing gender-based violence.