Progress since last week in Black In America

LEARNING ELEMENTS:

This game is trying to teach the frequency, levels of subtlety, and issues of dealing with Racial Microaggressions. At its base the game is trying to simulate the issues that one—of many—minority groups deal with.

The primary game mechanic simulated conversation the player engages in with different NPC’s. These generated NPC’s take on the persona of all the different people we interact with on the daily bases that we have no control over.

This game has high behavioral and social implications. This games if working properly will give its players the knowledge and skill base to interact in social settings and respond in positive ways to microaggressions that will promote a healthy mental state. The design is essentially exposure based therapy to help players develop the coping mechanisms necessary to not be damaged by the effects of microaggressions.

FORMAL ELEMENTS:

This is a single player game. The player interacts with NPC’s as they would in a real situation. The primary learning objective is to be able to identify racial microaggressions—among other forms of microaggressions—and understand how to deal with them. This game supports this because it introduces players to the different levels of RMA and gives the players opportunities to respond to them to build familiarity with what they look like and what to do when they are put in a RMA situation.

The engine limits behavior so that the only rule is to respond to the NPC’s. Whether we want to or not we are constantly placed in social setting in social predicaments and we have to do or say something. This is in line with the learning objective. There are no feasible materials required in this game. All the materials are transparent. In other words the consequences of your actions don’t affect how you play the game but they affect the outcome of the game.  The conflicts are introduced and built upon in each chapter. For instance the player begins in elementary school and encounters their first bully. Then they encounter other related conflicts up until they graduate form elementary school and then those conflicts are all concluded.

This game is an imagination based game. The player is not able to traverse a map or board, they are allow to choose a destination and responses. This limits what they can do physically in game but allows them more time to focus on their choices. As they make these choices they are allowed to revisit their choices to see what lead to their current position and allowed them to tactically decide where they want to go. This does not contribute to the learning objective but maybe fun for players who like to play through games for all possible outcomes.  The player could end up dead depending on the choices they make, or they could play through the game and see where they end up in life—level of wealth, success, happiness, etc.

DRAMATIC ELEMENTS:

The main character is an avatar the player names. Their motivation is to live the most prosperous life they can. This is the player’s opportunity to do the different things they wish they could do in real life (rl) without the rl repercussions.

The basic challenges include the understanding of how to deal with the RMA they encounter. The player must develop the ability to identify microaggressions. Once they do this they could choose to react as they would in rl or intentionally push buttons to get reactions out of people. This takes place in a much realistic current 2016 in America where Trump is running for president and racial salience is at an all-time modern day high.

The premise is that we deal with these aggressions on the daily basis so we should learn how to deal with them. This game has a linear branching story. This game is playful in the same way a story book is playful; it has many possible outcomes for the player to find. This game is for the adventure players because of its level of replayability.

The tension is perceptually resolved when a player gets to a new chapter, which in game is a new place in life. For example all high school tension is relieved when a player graduates high school but begins again in college.

SYSTEM ELEMENTS:

The objective behavior in this game is verbal communication through the means of premade dialect choices. The NPC’s a players interacts with appear to be not important but are able to reappear later in game depending upon their previous interaction with the player. The system in this game is not emergent but the severity of reactions by NPC’s can become drastic as the game develops.

Initially the idea behind what microaggressions are and what they encompass is hidden. This is brought to the player’s attention as they progress through the game. The player is to an extent responsible for the NPC’s reactions. As the player makes decisions about how they respond to the NPC the NPC will respond and the game can take drastically different paths.