Vantage Point is a VR game designed to curb sexual harassment – and ensure workplace training is taken seriously
Vantage Point’s exploration of sexual harassment in the workplace is deliberately chilling. Through its use of VR, you are placed in each scenario, and while the experience would be unnerving no matter the medium by which it was conveyed, doing so with a virtual reality headset strapped to your face definitely makes the subject matter seem even more sobering.
Created by entrepreneur Morgan Mercer, Vantage Point is a corporate sexual harassment training programme designed to ensure sexual misconduct training is taken seriously, and, according to its creator, avoids being a box-ticking exercise for onboarding employees. Mercer themself is open about their unfortunate experiences with sexual violence, and therefore Vantage Point is both a practical tool and a personal project that aims to help employees identify and prevent sexual misconduct in the workplace and beyond.
In its bid to teach communal accountability, the training programme explores three modules: bystander intervention; identification of sexual harassment; and learning to respond to harassment as it happens to you. Through all of this, Mercer’s overarching goal is for Vantage Point to become the gold standard for companies and their sexual harassment avoidance training initiatives – underpinned by scientific research, and designed to help install best practice guidelines.
In practice, one scenario that unfolds in the game’s ‘bystander intervention’ module sees three colleagues – three male, one female – discussing an upcoming work conference in Las Vegas. The men wind up hijacking the conversation to talk about off-colour topics such as boozing and jacuzzis at post-work event afterparties. When the female tries to re-establish the professional tone of the conversation, she’s physically grabbed by the boss and told to bring “fitting” attire for the party.
After that, another colleague texts to address the situation, and then you’re offered a number of narrative choices designed to help you reach the best conclusion in this clearly toxic scenario.
It’s powerful stuff, again accentuated by the fully-immersive manner in which it’s delivered. According to Mercer, research indicates that people who are trained by way of virtual reality are far more likely to retain information. And while I haven’t seen this research first-hand, I can definitely believe that at face-value. I was surprised when I learned this, but standards relating to sexual harassment in the workplace in the United States are pretty vague. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has regulations, but only three states actually require sexual harassment training – all of which underlines the importance of initiatives like Vantage Point.
Learn more about Vantage Point here.
Joe Donnelly
Joe Donnelly is a Glaswegian writer, video games enthusiast and mental health advocate. He has written about both subjects for The Guardian, VICE, his narrative non-fiction book Checkpoint, and believes the interactive nature of games makes them uniquely placed to educate and inform.