Prisoners Cinema

"Prisoner’s Cinema is a narrative-driven, expressive game being developed by a student team at Carnegie Mellon University. It conveys to players the subjective sensation of living a life subdued by insomnia, and that evokes from players an empathetic response. Regarding empathy, we want players unfamiliar with feelings of alienation to gain an understanding of how an affliction like insomnia can impact the sufferer physically, mentally, and emotionally, and we want players who have experienced or are experiencing the existential, societal ramifications of sickness to understand that they are not alone. Our project is influenced by modern, socially conscious games like Gone Home, Papers, Please, and That Dragon, Cancer, and other surreal and iconoclastic media sources, such as the films of David Lynch and the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre. Must videogames be predicated singularly by overt notions of “fun”? Prisoner’s Cinema intends to challenge this conceit, and to expand the range of videogames as a medium, if even incrementally."