G.A.M.E

Prototyping the future of film, games, and Immersive Storytelling

The Gaming, AI, Media & Experience (G.A.M.E.) Lab explores immersive technologies for interactive storytelling experiences. Our primary goal is to create immersive digital experiences that actively involve communities in both design and storytelling. We explore platforms that afford communities to jointly build and experience immersive narratives through inclusive design processes. In this sense, the content should invite users not just to watch or listen, but to actively shape the story.

We are particularly interested in advancing community-centered, immersive technology initiatives. From participatory media creation to AI-powered storytelling, it is a space where scholars, artists, students, and communities converge to co-create ethical, inclusive, and future-oriented media. Our focus areas include film, gaming, animation, extended reality (XR), and generative AI. We develop tools and experiences that are not only innovative but also culturally rooted, accessible in low-resource settings, and guided by community priorities.

The G.A.M.E. Lab is structured around five areas as follows:

• Interactive media and game design
• Animation and visual storytelling
• Immersive media and extended reality (XR)
• Interactive storytelling
• Human-centered AI and creative production

By integrating these fields, we reimagine digital storytelling, film, and games, expand access to underrepresented voices, and foster participatory modes of media creation.

Exploring the Intersection of Interactive and Immersive Storytelling

At the G.A.M.E. Lab, we are passionate about reimagining what storytelling can be in the digital age. Far from traditional narratives where audiences passively watch or read, we are deeply invested in how emerging technologies can invite people into the story, not just as spectators but as active participants.

Our work sits at the intersection of interactive and immersive storytelling, two approaches that share a common goal: to deepen engagement, presence, and meaning.

What is Interactive Storytelling?

Interactive storytelling empowers participants to influence how a narrative unfolds. Instead of following a fixed plot, people make choices, take actions, and collaborate with systems that respond in dynamic ways. These interactions can happen in games, digital narratives, or transmedia experiences where decisions lead to varying outcomes and emotional engagement.

What is Immersive Storytelling?

Immersive storytelling goes beyond choice to engulf the audience in a narrative world. This might be through extended reality (XR) technologies like virtual or augmented reality, or through deeply textured environments where sound, sight, and interaction blend to create a sense of being there. The aim is to reduce the distance between the user and the story world, to feel fully present within it.

Bringing Interaction and Immersion Together

At the G.A.M.E. Lab, our approach merges these two forms into participatory narrative experiences that are collaborative, emotionally resonant, and community-centered. Rather than telling stories to people, we design systems that enable people to shape stories themselves. Our projects use tools like branching narratives, game mechanics, and generative AI to allow players or participants to make meaningful choices within immersive environments.

For example, one of our interactive storytelling prototypes—A Day in the Life—invites users to step into the shoes of an immigrant mother navigating a challenging day. Your decisions matter and change the flow and emotional texture of the experience. It’s not about “winning” a game but about experiencing narrative through action and empathy.

Why This MATTERS

By blending immersive technologies with interactive narrative design, we’re pushing forward what it means to tell stories in an era defined by generative AI and rapidly evolving media ecologies. These experiences can deepen learning, foster empathy, and elevate voices that are often unheard in mainstream media. They also open space for community members, scholars, and creators to co‑design stories that reflect their realities and values.

In doing so, the G.A.M.E. Lab becomes not just a research space, but a creative hub where storytelling practices evolve alongside the technologies and communities that shape them.

Members are working on projects in interactive storytelling. See samples below.

A Day in the Life. An Interactive Story.

▶️ Play “A Day in the Life”

A Day in the Life is a one-minute interactive story experience about the everyday chaos, quiet courage, and emotional weight carried by a single immigrant mother trying to survive the city. You wake up late. The kids aren’t ready. Daycare is closing. Your boss won’t understand. One child gets sick. You have no backup, just a phone, your wits, and the fragile balance of a life stretched too thin. This game invites players to experience the emotional texture of decisions made under pressure, not to win, but to endure.

Game design. The game features an interactive experience with a branching narrative and multiple endings. It utilizes a minimal interface to ensure maximum emotional impact, removing unnecessary distractions to keep the player fully invested in the story’s characters and choices. It is developed using Twine, the accessible tool for interactive storytelling, and incorporates an innovative layer of optional AI-generated dialogue to dynamically add depth and nuance to character interactions.

Staying Housed in the City

An interactive storytelling game exploring housing and the affordability crisis in cities. Navigate real-world challenges, make tough choices, and discover how collective action and resilience can lead to change.

Another recent member collaboration was on a report for Africa No Filter and Meta, The State of Immersion: Exploring the Utility of Virtual Reality (VR), Artificial Reality (AR) and Extended Reality (XR) in (Re) Creating African Image which explored the role of immersive media in Africa, specifically Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Extended Reality (XR), in reimagining and (re)constructing African visual narratives and cultural representation.

This project aligns with one of the lab’s aims, which is to critically examine how immersive technologies are being utilized across the African continent to challenge colonial representations, reimagine African identities, and construct more nuanced, self-defined visual cultures. We explored how XR tools can serve as platforms for expression, storytelling, and speculative futures grounded in African knowledge systems.

We envision G.A.M.E. as more than just a research space, but a vibrant community of makers, thinkers, and collaborators. We are developing programming for community-based AI trainings, interactive screenings, AI and Storytelling Workshops, and Co-Creation Labs, where community members come together to explore, experiment, and build.

By blending research with creative practice, we aim to spark conversations about technologies that reflect diverse experiences and expand who gets to be seen, heard, and remembered in our digital futures. Our work seeks to engage with a new generation of creators, especially those from the Global South, who are not only adapting to technological change but also shaping its direction.