Social Justice Games: Building an Escape Room on Elder Abuse through Participatory Action Research

This paper discusses the creation of an escape room on older adult mistreatment (or elder abuse). The game, titled Sandra's Keys , invited players to engage with the story of a fictional older woman dealing with a situation of abuse through a series puzzles. The escape room sought to bring players into a conversation about the different forms of elder abuse, and to give them a greater understanding of their role as bystanders and of the potential ways to intervene. The escape room game was co-designed by researchers, a group of older adults activists in Montreal and a social worker. This paper focuses on how we made this game and the methodological principles and values behind the design process. This design process is grounded in Participatory Action Research and is inspired by the writings of radical theatre activist Augusto Boal. One of its aims was to consolidate long standing relationships between the members of the design team around a common social justice goal. We map out the potential of games to become tools in the ‘arsenal’ of community-based activism and to playfully contradict dominant societal norms related to age. Finally, we introduce the term ‘social justice game’ to assert the connections between activism, social justice and games studies.