I have always loved nearly every facet of entertainment that one can imagine. As a child I was a voracious reader and that turned me into a writer; a spinner of tales and fantasies. As I got older, my interests continued to grow with me. I discovered television and film and poetry and games. Video games, especially, have helped change my life for the better.
I enjoy TED talks because the presenters are always so real and so visceral. Often you can't help but cry along with them as they weep out their stories on stage. While doing research for this blog I decided I was going to narrow my focus to games and how they can be a conduit for change. Games can transform the very structure of your ideals.
Brenda Romero does a great job of explaining how a board game changed not only her life, but the life of her mixed race daughter. During Black History month, her 7 year old daughter game home and discussed the middle passage in a blase tone that suggested she didn't fully understand the far reaching impact and ramifications of such horrendous acts against human rights. So, in the only way she knew how, Brenda created a game for her daughter to play.
They spent a few hours creating "families" out of little figures, coloring them in to show the differences between families. While playing, the girl was rolling high and not doing well and realized that things were going south very quickly. She asked her mother "what do I do? We aren't going to make it, are we?" And her mother replied, honestly, that no, they likely would not. She explained to her daughter that many families were separated forever during the middle passage; be it from disease, starvation or drowning. And that, even those who made it to America, didn't fair much better. Entire families were destroyed, never to see one another again. Children were taken from their parents and many people died.
Her daughter cried when she realized that, as her mother put it, "the middle passage wasn't just a cruise that some people went on." It had horrible impacts on the human condition. And was the foundation for a terrible event in American history as well.
This ability to educate and inform through gaming is something that I hope I can do when I break into the entertainment industry. Whether I am writing a novel, a script for a show or film or whether I am writing a script for a video game, I want my work to have an impact. I want people to come away transformed and forever different because of their experience.
