Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions of Bury me, my Love for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.
A friendly reminder to all that where feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but self-editing (brevity) is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mainly reading. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.
Bury me, my Love
-
JaySevenZero
- Admin
- Posts: 2645
- Joined: August 27th, 2012, 4:28 pm
- Location: Liverpool, Europe, Earth
- Contact:
Re: 434: Bury me, my Love
Empathy! That's important isn't it? A key part of being human. The ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes and imagine - to some extent anyway - what they are experiencing and feeling. But empathy isn't either\or: There are degrees of empathy. No one can ever fully appreciate what it is to live another person's life and it is easier to have empathy with someone who shares things in common with you. Video games put us in different shoes from our own all the time. But usually you are in the shoes of a space marine or other warrior in an unlikely fantastical scenario, rather than the real life actual situation of millions of people on our own planet in our current day and age.
I do not have great knowledge of the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Whilst I might feel sympathetic to the plight of Syrian Refugees, it is at a very superficial level and along the lines of "Yes, that must be pretty awful for them."
But here is the game "Bury Me My Love" which has been carefully researched and which is based on the lived experience of actual Syrian refugees. And it puts you right in their shoes. . And the game makes you empathise with them and share in their hopes, their fears and their moments of both success and failure.
Nour and Majd are professionals. I'm a professional. They care about each other. I care for my loved ones. They make dumb jokes to each other. I make dumb jokes *all the time*!
But perhaps the biggest and most ingenious thing that the game does to make Nour and Majd relatable and to engender empathy for them, is in making the interface entirely through text messaging! In the modern world, what is more relatable than text messaging? Nour and Majd send emojis, selfies and make jokes about their typos! This does more than anything else to elevate them from being "faceless refugees" to being relatable human beings.
I've played through several times and I've encouraged friends and family to play through as well. The simplicity of the interface means that anyone can play through it. We've shared how our journeys went: some ending in tragedy, others with at least a degree of success and optimism for the future.
My favourite bit was Nour's stint working on a goat farm near the French\Italian border!
I am still no expert on the Syrian Refugee Crisis and I still don't really know what it is like to go through that experience. But I know more than I did. And I have more empathy for this situation than I did before.
I had never heard of this game and would never have considered playing it if it hasn't appeared on the Cane and Rinse list, so I am grateful to you for keeping your line up so diverse and interesting.
I do not have great knowledge of the Syrian Refugee Crisis. Whilst I might feel sympathetic to the plight of Syrian Refugees, it is at a very superficial level and along the lines of "Yes, that must be pretty awful for them."
But here is the game "Bury Me My Love" which has been carefully researched and which is based on the lived experience of actual Syrian refugees. And it puts you right in their shoes. . And the game makes you empathise with them and share in their hopes, their fears and their moments of both success and failure.
Nour and Majd are professionals. I'm a professional. They care about each other. I care for my loved ones. They make dumb jokes to each other. I make dumb jokes *all the time*!
But perhaps the biggest and most ingenious thing that the game does to make Nour and Majd relatable and to engender empathy for them, is in making the interface entirely through text messaging! In the modern world, what is more relatable than text messaging? Nour and Majd send emojis, selfies and make jokes about their typos! This does more than anything else to elevate them from being "faceless refugees" to being relatable human beings.
I've played through several times and I've encouraged friends and family to play through as well. The simplicity of the interface means that anyone can play through it. We've shared how our journeys went: some ending in tragedy, others with at least a degree of success and optimism for the future.
My favourite bit was Nour's stint working on a goat farm near the French\Italian border!
I am still no expert on the Syrian Refugee Crisis and I still don't really know what it is like to go through that experience. But I know more than I did. And I have more empathy for this situation than I did before.
I had never heard of this game and would never have considered playing it if it hasn't appeared on the Cane and Rinse list, so I am grateful to you for keeping your line up so diverse and interesting.
Re: Our next podcast recording (29.8.20) - 434: Bury me, my Love
I bought this on Switch for pennies a while back, but quickly realised it it wasn't getting played, so recently stumped up three quid for the mobile version.
What can I say about the game really. Well, I don't think it's a game. It's a piece of interactive fiction, I wouldn't even go so far as to put it in the visual novel genre. And as a story it was...ok? It didn't blow me away. To be honest, the subject matter is something I consider myself relatively well read on having worked with refugee families many times over the years, so it wasn't the eye opener that it could perhaps have been in different hands, but I found the story fairly interesting and did feel the pang of worry whenever Nour took her time to reply. I understand there are multiple endings, but I doubt I'll play it through again, at least not for a while, but I felt like I got a satisfactory beginning, middle and end.
To summarise, whilst I don't think this particular game was especially groundbreaking in terms of narrative, I did enjoy the delivery, and most liken in to the Lifeline games, which I personally enjoyed a lot more. I'm definitely interested in more games like this though, it's definitely a cool way to tell a story.
What can I say about the game really. Well, I don't think it's a game. It's a piece of interactive fiction, I wouldn't even go so far as to put it in the visual novel genre. And as a story it was...ok? It didn't blow me away. To be honest, the subject matter is something I consider myself relatively well read on having worked with refugee families many times over the years, so it wasn't the eye opener that it could perhaps have been in different hands, but I found the story fairly interesting and did feel the pang of worry whenever Nour took her time to reply. I understand there are multiple endings, but I doubt I'll play it through again, at least not for a while, but I felt like I got a satisfactory beginning, middle and end.
To summarise, whilst I don't think this particular game was especially groundbreaking in terms of narrative, I did enjoy the delivery, and most liken in to the Lifeline games, which I personally enjoyed a lot more. I'm definitely interested in more games like this though, it's definitely a cool way to tell a story.