If The Phone Rings: Answer It

Posted April 7, 2021April 7, 2026 in Emerging Media | Digital Studies, SPARK! 2026

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Author: Jillina Harken | Emerging Media | Digital Studies

Abstract:

If The Phone Rings: Answer It is a narrative exploration game set in a world where modern communication infrastructure has failed. Without mobile phones, wireless networks, or constant digital connectivity, players must rely on payphones, face-to-face interactions, and other analog forms of communication to navigate a small neighborhood environment. As players move through the space they uncover a series of interconnected storylines that reveal the lives of the people in the neighborhood and the ways those lives intersect. By removing access to contemporary digital devices, the game encourages players to think about how communication, coordination, and community might function when modern technological convenience is no longer accessible.

The project is informed by the theoretical frameworks of media archaeology, platform studies, and medium design, particularly the way these frameworks ask us to look at communication technologies as infrastructures that shape social behavior. Media archaeology, in particular, encourages a closer look at obsolete technologies, not simply as outdated tools but as systems that reveal the assumptions built into technological progress. The payphone provides a useful example. Once a common form of public communication infrastructure, it functioned as a shared device embedded in physical spaces. Its disappearance reflects a broader shift toward individualized communication systems centered around personal mobile devices.

These ideas are translated into the structure of the game itself. Communication in the game is spatial and situational. Players move through the neighborhood, encounter people, receive messages through payphones, and piece together information through physical exploration rather than instant digital feedback. This slower and more place-based approach to communication highlights how different technological systems shape the pace and texture of everyday interaction. Further, it takes away the instant gratification of a text message and demonstrates the intentionality of communication.

This project is part of a larger body of work examining the cultural and infrastructural disappearance of payphones. It builds on research presented last year at the SPARK! conference in my poster “Ringing Out of Time: The Payphone as a Cultural Artefact.” While that work focused on the historical and cultural role of the payphone and a hypothetical question of what would happen if the payphone was reintroduced, If The Phone Rings: Answer It extends the research. Through interactive game design, this project is using a simulated environment to explore how communication technologies structure the social experience and how those experiences might change if those systems disappeared.

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