British Red Cross: Traces of Hope

Raising awareness of civilians in conflict through the medium of alternate reality gaming: Art direction, story, design and some other stuff.

Back in 2008, alternate reality gaming was still a pretty novel idea. We'd been trying to find a reason to do one for a little while when British Red Cross approached us and asked us to help them get teenagers thinking about the plight of young civilians caught up in conflicts in Africa.

We built a story around the character of Joseph, a 16 year old Ugandan refugee who's stuck in a refugee camp trying to track down his family. A visiting journalist, Alan Hackston, drops his satellite phone - Joseph finds it, and dials the most recent number...

We mapped out a fake refugee camp and built a sophisticated chatbot that enabled players to communicate with Joseph through an instant messenger-style interface. As he moved around the camp he'd ask for the player's help with the sort of problems civilians in conflict face everyday, sending people across the internet looking for answers.

Every so often Joseph would be able to transmit a glitchy video message (actually filmed in a stubbornly sunny garden in north Bristol), or contact one of Alan's other friends who would get involved to help the player out.

Because of the nature of the campaign we managed to get partnerships with Reuters, Penguin Books and Yahoo Answers, which really helped us blur the line between the 'real' internet and the bits of it we'd made up for the game.

Despite a few little mishaps (accidentally putting a doctor from Philadelphia's phone number in one of our teaser images, that sort of thing), the campaign got more coverage than any others ever run by BRC. It was even on the front page of the BBC news site for one day. It went on to win a One World Media award for best use of New Media, and it was so successful it's still running now. Have a go!

The technical lead on this project was Fintan Darragh, who was one of the most talented, friendly, generally excellent people I ever met. It wouldn't have been nearly as good without him - RIP Fin.