Playing God

Playing God is an interactive VR thought experiment that lets you imagine you are the captain of a space station, a space station suddenly presented with a humanitarian crisis. It challenges its audience with a series of scenarios and questions based it’s upon its narrative to explore how the audience would deal with a humanitarian crisis themselves.

Imagine you are the captain of a space station. A space station suddenly presented with a humanitarian crisis. When given the choice, who will you save?

Presenting audiences with a spin on lifeboat ethics, Playing God encourages its audience to interrogate and reflect on their own stance on helping others and sharing resources in a time of need. It presents lifeboat ethics in a new style thought experiment based on the renowned 1970’s ecologist Garett Harding 1974 essay ‘Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor’. It plays on Harding’s essay setting it on a futuristic location popular metaphor used by Environmentalists in the 60’s and 70’s of the earth as a “spaceship,” most famously used in Adlai Stevenson 1965 speech to the UN. It explores how national borders are playing a key role in today’s political and cultural discourse, and uses this unique immersive approach to the refugee crisis that places audiences at the very philosophical core of the debate.

Showing

Cannes XR – May 2019 (Preview) – Cannes, France
Phoenix Cinema – June 2019 (Preview) – Leicester UK
Raindance Film Festival – 26-28 Sept (World Premiere) – London, UK
Leicester XR – 19 Oct 2019- Phoenix, Leicester UK
Frequency Festival – 24 -27 Oct 2019- Lincoln, UK
RAMFest – 3 Nov – 2019 QUAD, Derby, UK
Aesthetica Film Festival – 6-10 Nov 2019- York, UK
Hyper Festival – 23 Nov 2019 – São Paulo, Brazil
Storytelling in the Fourth Industrial Revoloution – 7-28 Nov 2019 Ruskin Gallery, Cambridge, UK
VR Days – 21 Feb 2020 – QUAD, Derby, UK

Get the Experience for Free

Download on Steam
Download on itch.io

Crew

Executive Producer
Alex Rühl @ Cats Are Not Peas

Lead Programmer
Dominic Mathuse

Lead Artist
Matt Bultitude

Costume & Set Designer
Kate Unwin

Hair & Makeup
Victoria Price

Music
James Andean

Sound Mixer
Les Hayden

Camera & Lighting
Alec Jordan

Camera
Joel Caborn

Lifepod VFX
Richard Van De Steenoven

Poster Artwork
Phil Ballaam

Assistant Director, Script support and Casting
Edward Spence

Cast

Commander
Claire Lebowitz

Lieutenant
Mark Peachey

Ensign
Matthew Morrison

Shuttlebay Officer
Dev Joshi

Doctor Sojourner
Dawson

Woman on Colony 3
Debbie Bird

Newcomer
Melvyn Rawlinson

With Special Thanks to

Chris Tyrer, Paul Long, Dr Sarah Fine, Keith Allott, Andrew Crawshaw, David Gilbert, Peter Bonnell, Tim Brooke, John Cairns, Nick Higgett, Sean Clark, Dale Robertson, Catherine Allen, Jo Verrent and Unlimited.

Those involved in the original prototype

VR Design
Anthony Clark

Concept design
Wayne Mitchelson

Cast
Leonie Carpenter, Kieron Attwood, Katrina Sansone, Ed Spence, & Safia Lamrani

Funded By