[p4k] Milestones
In our last week before the new year, Playing 4 Keeps had three major milestones: we chose our issue for the game, the students wrote their first blog entries, and we began experimenting with digital media creation. First, on Monday Barry came out to help resolve a schism in the group: the students were evenly divided between two issues for our game. Half the group wanted to do Hurricane Katrina, and half wanted to focus on the various issues of war and the military that President Eisenhower termed “the military-industrial complex.” While no one knew that term, many students could described its features: excessive spending on increasingly destructive weapons, underfunding social services to fund the military, and starting expensive, devastating, unnecessary wars.
Both issues are important and current and the students had strong, passionate arguments. Barry was able to stress that P4K is a team, however, and the point of our decision making process is to create consensus, not have one side beat the other. As a compromise, we have decided to make a game about “The effect of the military-industrial complex on the Hurricane Katrina Disaster.” Yes, it sounds like a masters thesis, and no, that doesn’t scare us. By focusing on one aspect of Hurricane Katrina, we’ll be able to drill down and make a very specific game, but also one that connects a local (and national) issue to global issues. I think the topic will work very well for our game, and from the preliminary research I’ve done, there’s so much information on this topic we’ll have to be judicious about what we include.
After choosing the topic, our kids went to the computers and started blogging for their first time. While some of the students took a little time to warm up to the technical details of blogging, and not everyone was ecstatic about an activity that seemed suspiciously like school work, others dove into the task. Some of the entries are rich with character and detail, and do a better job of describing the workshop than I’ve done in this entry. We’re definitely going to make blogging a regular part of P4K so the students have a chance to express themselves online and polish their writing skills.
On Thursday we discussed the different roles within a game design team and role-played the workflow of a game company. It was the students’ first chance to think about all the different jobs within a game lab, and what roles they might want to play in our project. The highlight of the day, however, was introducing Scratch. Scratch is a program designed by MIT that allows users to create digital media projects without writing any code. Instead, instructions such as turn left, stop, and loop are embedded in virtual puzzle pieces that can be snapped together. The blocks of instructions then control images users place on a stage allowing the creation of games, movies, and art.
The class loved the software and I was amazed at how quickly they picked it up. Within a few minutes they were making all different types of projects. Some were animating, others made music, and other students used the program like Adobe Illustrator to create elaborate scenes. I had planned to only work with the program for a half hour, but seeing how much fun everyone was having, it just seemed criminal to pull them off. For forty-five minutes we had art class, pure and relaxing. It was a good way to finish the year: our issue decided, our writing muscles exercised, and our creative juices flowing. Now the real fun begins.
