Woven Worlds

🎮 Games for Change Festival - 🧠 2023 XR Brain Jam Submission

View our full Games for Change XR Brain Jam Presentation here.

Introducing Woven Worlds

What if we dared to imagine? Envision a future where technology serves as a tool to augment our abilities and build economic empowerment, enabling us to tell our own stories, build on our own history, and express our own emotions in a profound and personal manner.

Imagine one of our team member’s aunt Victoria in Tiumpampa. A 70-year-old Quechua woman, she understands the world in her unique way. Now, picture her putting on a headset to take control of her own narrative. With her words, her emotions, she shapes her representation, creating her own world that emanates from her experiences and feelings.

Our Brain Jam prototype represents the first iteration of a moment-building pipeline. Over the course of 25 minutes, our team devised 12 worlds reflecting upon a prompt: our connection to water through environments. Within the time, we generated 3D visual environments and a plan for a soundscape and 3D objects. We shared with each other beautiful moments of discovery, finding unexpected linkages and stepping into intimate moments from each other's lived experiences. 

This revelation in hand, we focused our efforts over the remaining 1.5 days on building a pipeline to enable others to experience the power we ourselves felt through our co-creation. Our prototype serves to highlight the process of creation, encouraging horizontal collaboration and democratizing access to technology.

Our finished product will enable our guests, upon donning a headset, to express their feelings, describe their surroundings — and then see the world build itself around them. 

We are making technology accessible, simple, and possible for everyone, enabling each other to architect experiences in a way authentic to them. We are defying formulas, embracing individuality and the spirit of the moment to co-create. We're not interested in telling your story; we want to provide you with the means to tell it yourself. We embrace a world where process is not the barrier, and the ability to execute does not override the value of the idea.

In this journey, we are striding away from cultural extractivism, fostering a space where economic empowerment and creativity coalesce. We recognize that the future is not about the process, but about our ability to experiment, to imagine, and to create. And, most importantly, we are allowing individuals, like Aunt Victoria, to participate and thrive in this future, irrespective of their age or cultural background.

About the Team:

• Andrew O'Rourke
• Brian Chung
• Daniel Fallshaw
• David Obajemu
• Elizabeth Walsh (SME)
• Leon Wang (SME)
• Violeta Ayala

Any curiosities or want to learn more? Reach out to us at leonwang55@gmail.com!

Tech and Software:

• Game Engine: Unity
• XR Headset: HTC Elite
• Audio: Reaper, Freesound.org, pixabay
• Art: Skybox AI   
• Tools: Discord, Google Suite

Special Thanks:

• Voice Actors:
• Graphics: 
• HTC Elite Support: Brandon Connelly 
• XRBJ 2023 Organizing Team & Participants