About Loki’s Loop

At Loki’s Loop we design escape rooms and other games as an engaging way to experience and learn about misinformation

Loki’s Loop is a project of the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public. Our first game – The Euphorigen Investigation – is an escape room. Escape rooms are live-action adventure games where teams of players work cooperatively to solve a series of puzzles. The immersive nature of the medium serves as an engaging way to interact with various deceptive tactics such as manipulated charts, bot accounts, and deepfakes. It’s an experiential rather than skills-based approach for people to think more critically about the information they encounter online.

Euphorigen is available in two versions – online and popup. The online version is played over video conferencing software (e.g. Teams, Zoom) and web browser. The popup version is a kit that can be downloaded and printed for in-person play. In both versions a gamehost (e.g. librarian, teacher) facilitates the experience.

Loki’s Loop games are products of extensive research and co-design activities at the UW Center for an Informed Public, a nexus for multidisciplinary research on misinformation and translating research into policy, technology design, curriculum development, and public engagement. Other partners are the Technology & Social Change Group, the GAMER Research Group, and Puzzle Break (the first escape room company in the U.S.).

People

Core Team

PhD Students

Collaborators

Eric Gordon, Professor and Director, Engagement Lab, Emerson College

Rachel Moran, Postdoctoral Scholar, Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington

Maddy Jalbert, Postdoctoral Scholar, Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington

Julie Kientz, Professor and Chair, Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington

Stacey Wedlake, Research Scientist, Technology & Social Change Group, University of Washington Information School

Technology

El Forst, Web Application Developer, University of Washington Information School

Jason Portenoy, Data Engineer, Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington

Paul Lockaby, Senior Data Engineer, Center for an Informed Public, University of Washington

Students

Daphne Hsu, Audrey Kho, Ploy Pruekcharoen, Yichi Zhang, Ria Antony, Amaya Kejriwal, Lei Lei, Gladys Hitt, Yinan Guo, Amruta Jadhav, Shinji Yamashita, Carly Minow, Craig Kelliher, Simon Talusan, Jerry Wang, Gina Rome, Caitlin Smith, Nataliya Muzyka, Francis Wang, Amruta Jadhav, Yuanfeng Li, Dev Mathur, Taylor Agajanian, Lindsey Schwartz, Alexander Escalera Sanchez, Iva Matkovic, Helen Li, Sathvika Shakhamuri, Jacob Lackner, Ari Hock, Juan Carlos Gomez, Jamie Ramos, Yimeng Wang, Maina Gachugu, Darren Ma, Andy Cahill, John Rosen, Jeffrey Wang, Justin Bao, Molly Wu, Angelina Lum, Katherine Wardhana

Advisors

June Ahn, Associate Professor, University of California, Irvine, School of Education

Candace Epps-Robertson, Assistant Professor, English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Barbara Fister, Professor Emerita, Gustavus Adolphus College

Risa Puno, Artist

Juan Rubio, Digital Media and Learning Program Manager, Seattle Public Library

Claire Wardle, Co-founder, First Draft News

Loki’s Loop is a project of:

Project Partners

Sponsors