Witness to the Revolution

Witness to the Revolution is an educational computer game built in Unity designed to teach the public about the events of the Boston Massacre. The game is a collaboration between Professor Austin Mason and Professor Serena Zabin at Carleton College, and will be installed at the Old State House in Boston upon completion as an introduction to the museum. Players of the game must piece together testimonies of the Boston Massacre in preparation for the soldiers’ trial as they decide whether to support the prosection or the defense.

In Fall 2019, I enrolled in a course called The Boston Massacre in 3D: Mapping, Modeling and Serious Gaming where students helped build the digital infrastructure for the game. I worked on creating the user interface of the player’s map that he or she would use to navigate the streets of Boston. This involved designing the appearance of the map, including the typography, icons, and display, as well as implementing the design in Unity. I began by researching map styles from other video games and creating a mockup of the map, identifying potential icons and fonts. I then translated this vision to Unity where I added functionalities, including the abilities to resize the map and toggle between map layers and icons. You can read my reflection on this work here.

This project embodies how digital technology has expanded the realm of opportunity for education, allowing for a much more interactive and hands-on learning experience. By playing Witness to the Revolution, museum visitors gain a firsthand perspective of what life would have been like in eighteenth century Boston during this time.