Chimeria:Grayscale: an interactive narrative for provoking critical reflection on gender discrimination

Abstract

<jats:p>Roleplaying has a history of serving diverse aims, including art, entertainment, therapeutic purposes, and political action (Piper 1973; Gygax 1978; Boal 1993; Matthews et al. 2014). This paper presents an interactive narrative called Grayscale that uses roleplaying to provoke critical reflection through modeling workplace gender discrimination. Grayscale's interface resembles a streamlined email system, constituting what Henry Jenkins has termed an “embedded narrative” since the narration is distributed across elements in the space (e.g. emails, notes, draft messages).</jats:p>