[P4K] CONSENT! Successfully Launches in Second Life
On Wednesday, April 8, 2009, Global Kids' Playing 4 Keeps youth created game CONSENT! launched officially in the Clemson Teaching Learning sim within the main grid of the virtual world Second Life.
The two hour event was attended by some three dozen avatars who got to be some of the first people within the main grid to play the game and many more who visited and played CONSENT! in the following days.
More info on CONSENT! after the jump.
We also received lots of great feedback and comments about CONSENT! and the game play experience. Below are a few comments left from players immediately after playing it via CONSENT!'s automatic posting of feedback to twitter.
Click here to visit and play CONSENT! within Second Life.
About Playing 4 Keeps
Since 2002 Global Kids has been a leader in the use of online games to promote global awareness, engaged citizenship, and 21st Century Learning Skills. Through the Playing 4 Keeps program, Global Kids trains urban youth to develop games about important social and world issues. Global Kids played a founding role in the creation of Games For Change, which is committed to supporting individuals and organizations to use digital games for social change, and Global Kids advises other institutions, such as IBM, on the creation of games and games-based learning curricula. In addition, Global Kids, staff and students speak and write regularly about this work in academic, non-profit and philanthropic settings.
Youth leaders in the program at South Shore High School continued to gain hands-on game development experience by participating in the intensive after school program and by designing games using tools in the virtual world of Teen Second Life. The game they developed- CONSENT! - is an immersive experience that challenges its player to make difficult decisions while learning about six decades of medical racism targeting African-American male prisoners.
About the Game CONSENT!
CONSENT! is a first person, simulation game based on Harriet A. Washington's book "Medical Apartheid" (www.medicalapartheid.com) in which your avatar assumes the role of an African-American prisoner who has to make tough decisions about whether to choose to 'consent' and submit to medical experiments, which took place during the time period of the 1940s to the present.
The game was designed and developed by Global Kids youth leaders in the Playing 4 Keeps after school program at South Shore High School, NYC using tools in the virtual world of Teen Second Life. Additional building and scripting was also done by the teen-run TSL development company, Digital Refinery.
Find out more information on CONSENT! our blog or http://globalkids.org/?id=111
Media on CONSENT!
- CONSENT! - an introduction by Barry Joseph, Director of OLP, Global Kids
- A video tour of CONSENT! game in Teen Second Life
Global Kids Playing 4 Keeps teen Tashawna, part of the team who helped develop CONSENT!, takes us on a tour of the project that was created within Teen Second Life during 2006-07. She was asked to narrate it nearly a year after the game was completed. It was created in partnership with youth in the Global Kids after school program and youth developers in Teen Second Life.
- Harriet A. Washington's book: Medial Apartheid and letter from the author on the game CONSENT!
The Playing 4 Keeps (P4K) program was made possible through the generous support of Microsoft Corporations US Partners in Learning.
To find out more information on our P4K program go to http://www.globalkids.org/?id=21.
Thank you to Clemson University and the generous use of the Clemson Teaching and Learning Services sim for display of CONSENT!
