Steampunk Rochester

Steampunk Rochester is an interdisciplinary project at the Rochester Institute of Technology that is slated to span over three years with the end goal of creating a crowd contributor-based interactive narrative game. The first iteration involved approximately 75 students from two colleges (Liberal Arts and Computing and Information Sciences) and three departments (English, Visual Culture, Interactive Games and Media) across an academic year. Students recreated the world of Rochester in the 1920s, first in text and then in a prototype “point-and-click adventure” video game accounting for social forces at play that time, including labor struggles, women’s suffrage, racism against immigrants, prohibition, and wealth stratification.