engAGE Games

engAGE Games presents the outcomes of a series of collaborative game design workshops focused on aging in Montreal. Over several months, a group from The Suspicious Fish (https://www.suspiciousfish.org) met regularly at Concordia University's engAGE Center for Research on Aging (https://www.concordia.ca/research/aging.html) to develop games that draw on personal experiences and community perspectives, and explore the social, material, and institutional dimensions of aging. The games question how communities are maintained, supported, and made livable over time while highlighting how game design can be used for knowledge mobilization to improve access to scientific knowledge and digital literacy. 

The workshops combined discussion, storytelling, and iterative prototyping. Participants were invited to share experiences related to aging, whether their own or those of people around them, and were prompted to translate these into playable stories. Across sessions, recurring themes included navigating healthcare systems, housing precarity, downsizing, and feelings of isolation, as well as moments of care, adaptation, and resilience.

All the games were collaboratively developped by: Wendy Allen, Anne, Ramsay Blair, Anne Caines, Marlene Chan, Mario Coverini, Eric Craven, Donna Davis, Louise Jack, Ken McLachlan, Francis Léveillé, and Ali-Usama Zreik.