[p4k] Visitors!
We had a week of visitors here at P4K. On Monday, AMD (who’s funding our game as part of a larger Changing the Game games and education initiative) came with two film crews and photographers. They’re planning an ad campaign to promote their funding program, and we’re thrilled that Playing 4 Keeps will be featured in the ads. On June 10th ads will run in the New York Times, Wired Magazine, and the Wall Street Journal featuring one of our students holding up a laptop with Ayiti on the screen! There will also be banner ads online and AMD websites promoting Changing the Game and Playing 4 Keeps. All the students were very excited to have a chance to be in the ads, and throughout the day they stopped by the office to be photographed and interviewed. We don’t know who’s going to star in the ads, but whoever it is, this is a great development for the students, Global Kids, Canarsie High School, and game-based learning.
Our workshop was certainly a unique experience–we got an idea of what it’s like to be on a reality TV show. While we tried to keep everything as normal as possible, it was hard not to be distracted by the boom mike constantly floating overhead and the cameramen buzzing around to catch every idea and reaction. We all broke out laughing a few times when mid-sentence a student would suddenly have a zoom lens in his face snapping photos like a gatling gun.
Nonetheless, despite all the distractions we still managed to discuss the typhoon crisis in Burma and have the students apply their knowledge of disaster management to the situation. We spent the majority of the time discussing the main character’s name for the game. Barry was in the class to help out, and he stepped in at a key moment to discuss a challenging issue. When we were deciding the game’s art style a couple weeks ago, one of the students had pointed to a drawing and said, “That character looks more black, but I like the other one [that looks more mixed].” It was a difficult moment. Race relations in New Orleans have long been strained, and Katrina was obviously a major instance of underlying tensions dramatically breaking through the surface. We felt the student’s comment (which others supported) was an example of ingrained, or subconscious racism, but we’d struggled to draw out the conversation and make a teachable moment out of it.
While deciding character names, there was another moment when a student suggested Shaniqua as a name and some students ridiculed it as a “ghetto” name. Barry stepped in to start a discussion of representation, stereotypes, and subconscious racism. I was proud that even with cameras rolling we could begin a difficult conversation that had no clear ending. The situation wasn’t “fixed” in the end, of course, but the issue had been broached and the students had contributed their ideas. Overall, the afternoon went great and the film crew was impressed with both the program and our students. They’d been articulate and thoughtful in their interviews and done the program proud. I’m looking forward to the ads–it’s more pressure for the game, but also an amazing opportunity for everyone.
On Thursday, we had members of the People’s Hurricane Relief Fund come visit. We had two adults and three young people from New Jersey come to the class and share their experiences traveling to New Orleans and working with Common Ground after the hurricane. They had lots of photos and video to show the destruction, but even more important they had their personal experiences. One of my biggest regrets about this project has been that we haven’t been able to involve Katrina survivors more. I’ve been able to show our design to some people from New Orleans and we’ve gotten feedback here and there, but ideally we would have developed everything with survivor input. While our visitors on Thursday weren’t survivors, they did have first hand experience in the disaster clean up, and their emotional attachment to the tragedy was palpable. After the presentation and some questions, our students moved on to develop game titles and it was helpful to have our guests there for input. We didn’t finish our decision making process (the title is a big decision) we’ll finish next week and there are a lot of good ideas.
