Compassion in Conflict: Three Design Principles for the Abolitionist Imagination (Devcom 2025)

Описание: “Holding a hand against the screen, we might recognize the space for empathy that opens up while we are holding sameness and difference together.”
Anable, A. (2018)

In this talk I advocate for a few ways to facilitate a co-creative mindset in a medium that often models exceptional individualism. Here we're focused more on interactive narrative design than on police and prison abolition more broadly, but rest assured there's a whole lot to discuss!

I'd like to pay tribute to the many friends, scholars, writers, and activists who informed this talk:

My grad supervisor Dr. Ben Collier, and my Program Director Dr. Lynda Clark. All my Narrative Futurists, of course! Especially Beth Tianxin Xia, who helped with designing the slides.

The Baby Ghosts Community for providing early feedback on the talk; Ahmar, eileen, jennie, henry, Aric, Leslie, sarah, Rahul, and Amanda.

Creative Interventions -- the toolkit and the podcast were particularly excellent resources.

Aubrey Anable

Mariame Kaba

adrienne maree brown

Kai Cheng Thom

M. E. O'Brien and Eman Abdelhadi

Contributors to the Polaris Papers

and many more!


Games mentioned, in order:

The Last of Us Part 2, Naughty Dog

Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2, BioWare

Baldur's Gate 3, Larian Studios

Scarlet Hollow, Black Tabby Games

Disco Elysium, ZA/UM

I Am Alive, Ubisoft Shanghai

Signs of the Sojourner, Echodog Games

Suzerain, Torpor Games

Eliza, Zachtronics

The Walking Dead, Telltale Games

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While The Moonmeter Collective is sadly no more, I am grateful to those who sparked it with me, and some of us are still pursuing the project mentioned here. If you might want to be involved or just want to chat about some of the ideas presented here, get in touch at [email protected] or [email protected]!

Thanks to Devcom 2025 for having me and for providing the base recording, this was a total dream. And shout-outs to everyone who came to trade perspectives after, y'all were a delight!

Thanks for watching.