Ministry of Futility
Research Question
How might serious play and absurdist narrative surface tacit knowledge about bureaucracy, power, and agency?
Methods
- action research
- serious play
- narrative prototyping
- interactive fiction
Ethical Commitments
- reflective critique
- participant sense-making
- humour as inquiry
Project Overview
The Ministry of Futility is a text-based adventure game that immerses players in a world of inefficiency and pointless bureaucracy. The game is built using Twine-like functionality but with custom HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. The narrative unfolds as players make decisions and navigate through various departments within the Ministry, each scene pushing the boundaries of absurdity.
Game Play
Players start the game as a new employee at the Ministry of Futility, tasked with navigating the convoluted bureaucracy and absurd processes of the organisation. As they progress through the game, players will encounter various departments, each with its own unique challenges and obstacles. By making choices and interacting with the narrative, players will uncover the dark secrets of the Ministry, find a way to tap into the Woo and ultimately decide the fate of the organisation. The game intentionally exaggerates bureaucratic logic to invite reflection on how such systems shape behaviour, compliance, and meaning in real-world institutional settings.
Process & Methodology
This project emerged as an exploratory action research experiment using interactive fiction as a reflective instrument. Rather than treating the game as a finished product, it functioned as a probe to test how absurdist narrative and constrained choice architectures resonate with players’ lived experiences of bureaucracy.
I had been exploring Twine as a tool for interactive storytelling and game design. However, I wanted to create a more custom experience that allowed for greater flexibility and control over the game’s mechanics and aesthetics and the construction of the narrative. I wanted to be able to write the narrative and scenes in markdown as a pure text format, then have a system that could parse that markdown and convert it into interactive HTML pages with branching paths and choices.
To achieve this, after some wireframing in figma to find the look and feel to match the game’s theme, I decided to build the game using HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, and a parser in Python that converted the markdown into scene files in JS. So leveraging my design, writing, and web development skills, alongside generative assistance from ChatGPT, I created a blend of Kafkaesque absurdity and interactive storytelling.
Results & Impact
Early player responses suggest strong resonance with those who have worked within highly bureaucratic environments. Informal feedback highlighted recognition, humour, and a sense of catharsis, indicating that absurdist play can act as a mirror for institutional experience.
Future Improvements
As this is one of many experiments in interactive storytelling and game design, there are several areas for future improvement. These include expanding the narrative with more scenes and branching paths, enhancing the user interface and experience, and incorporating more advanced game mechanics such as inventory management, character progression and the ability to interact with the NPCs.
Maybe in some manic creative 🌈 burst the next version may emerge…
Additional Artifacts
And because I love playing with a bit of hip hop I also created a Ministry of Futility themed rap song. Combining my own lyrics, voice, and production. Also with some custom visuals I create using a trained model on exactly.ai. All to accompany the game experience which you can listen to here.