2019; created on Sims4, found graphics from community-sourced creative content
TRIGGER WARNING: sexual abuse and trauma
To Play: space bar to get through title screen and trigger warning, click on highlighted objects

Before Unity, game modifications were a primary way artists engaged with video games; modifications were used to make something new, to reimagine the original game, and to make a political statement. I was initially interested in the artificial in regards to love and women’s experience with misogyny, the patriarchy, and sexual abuse and the subsequent trauma abuse induces. With both an interest in game modifications and sexual trauma in regards to the female population, I wanted to create a game that explored counter-gaming, drawing influence from games Bientôt l'été and Deus Ex Machina, and Donna Haraway’s The Cyborg Manifesto. I researched and brainstormed the history and meanings of “artificial” and “saccharin” (saccharin is an artificial sweetener that leaves a bitter aftertaste). I searched for and downloaded modifications from tumblr and other websites, picking mods that I felt were personal items that would tell a narration about abuse. I staged the items in a bedroom, relating to the fact that sexual trauma is an intimate and vulnerable experience. I created the scene in the Sims4 computer game and then created the sprites in Adobe Photoshop and finally placed all the elements in Unity. I created this game because I wanted to draw empathy to a first person perspective of sexual trauma and to draw attention to the relationship between vulnerable women and predatory men. ​