WILDWOOD: Southside Chicago Worldbuilding Through Interactive Digital Narrative
摘要
From the archive to the screen, Black digital humanists regularly engage interactive digital media as a tool of social justice-based creative placemaking. In this short paper, Alexander examines interactive digital narrative as a radical worldbuilding platform, particularly for marginalized communities, and outlines a theoretical framework for Black futurist worldbuilding. This framework culminates in WILDWOOD, an afro-solarpunk interactive digital narrative that visions a rewilded future for one Southside Chicago neighborhood. WILDWOOD incorporates elements of tabletop roleplay game storytelling and interactive digital narrative methods, using hypertext fiction and chance as digital worldbuilding tools. The game explores community histories and futures through Black speculative placemaking, offering tools to imagine new visions of Black worlds and space to enact through immersive digital narrative play.