Data Heist

Rotterdam has been chosen as a focus point in the immersive story game Data Heist for its innovative development, multicultural social structure, and as a rapidly growing city despite the fact that it had to be built from scratch after the events of the second world war. This rising metropolitan area has innovated into one of the largest cities in The Netherlands. Furthermore, new developments have shown that the city of Rotterdam is working on greening the city central district within the next ten years. Extrapolating on this trend, a conclusion has been made about what the city in 2050 might look like and how people might live their daily lives in this resilient city. Greenery will be throughout the whole city, such as small trees and bushes will decorate facades of buildings and rooftops to combine nature and urbanization into a healthier, fresher, and above all a more sustainable environment. Other trends have shown that data is becoming more important as well. It could even become a currency one day if it is being compared with modern-day businesses such as Facebook or some insurance companies. It is to be expected that along with data, the technology for the use of artificial intelligence will evolve as well. Therefore, making the city smart and intelligent. This is where the given theme for the game comes into play: data, artificial intelligence, and smart cities.

These findings are used as the building blocks for the story since data is the main form of currency in this city and can be generated in various ways. The story is about the abuse of personal data by a large company named Corp.exe and the objective is to stand up against them to return your data and reveal the true whereabouts of the organization. From the beginning of the story, this company has stolen the main character’s data, making him poorer than he already is. The player is not alone in his task to take down this large investor of Rotterdam, as he is assisted by a journalist. Together they travel across a modern and green city to learn about the importance of owning your personal data. Although playable scene for this virtual experience is mainly focused on the second half of the story, it simulates how the area might look in 2050 and what the people living there think about daily. When the game is being played, the city can be explored before there appears a way to stealthily break into the facility of Corp.exe to restore the personal data.
During the process of the production of this game, the Avans Expertise Centre Technical Innovation (ETI) was closely involved in the project as a client. Avans ETI explores different ways to make the world more sustainable. In addition, their goal is to improve the viability and resilience of cities. The research done in this project and the product at the outcome is used to improve their insight in the problems and solutions in future cities from a Communication and Multimedia Design student’s perspective as their study involves thinking and iterating about the future. The method used for this conclusion was an interactive story game where the player faces the problems of a hypothetical city in 2050 based upon a set of given themes.