The PETRAS Edge of Tomorrow (ET) project at Cheltenham Science Festival

The PETRAS Edge of Tomorrow (ET) project from Lancaster University took their Prometheus Game to Cheltenham Science Festival on 7-12 June 2022. The game was situated in the Festival’s Arcade zone, which was visited by over 24 thousand attendees over the course of the week.

The Arcade, with its cool graphics and retro arcade games, posed a series of creative and cryptic challenges to show how new technologies will shape our culture in the future. The Prometheus Game, in which players play the role of a hacker exploiting IoT vulnerabilities, fitted in perfectly. As the team behind the project describe: “the game is about making the invisible visible, a way of starting the debate on what Data Sustainability is and engaging with the public on this matter. Awareness of this topic is the first step in changing behaviours and the game is purposefully designed with this idea in mind.”

At least 500 attendees of the festival played the game, which was very popular with players of all ages, drawing comments including the following: “It can’t be that easy to hack someone… is it?”; “That’s scary, I’m going to cover all my webcams when we get home”, and “In the sequel there should be sound effects. I hope there is a sequel.”.