“High Life”: Helping High Risk Urban Teens Create a Weed Prevention Game App
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High Life! How six Real Talk teens, two RPI professors, a smattering of grad students, and three clueless staff worked together to create a game app that addresses the negative, positive, and neutral consequences of pot, tobacco, and alcohol use among Black/Latino urban teens, ages 13-17. Participants in this workshop will hear via Skype from the six youth who created first the board game and then the game app, "High Life," and the professors who taught them how. Real Talk youth share ways to teach other teens about behavior change and risk/harm reduction in a nonjudgmental way, how to playtest a game, game app creation including the mechanics, marketing via social media, and more! Professor Chang (Department of the Arts Director, Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences), and, Laquana Cooke (PhD Candidate in Communication and Rhetoric), will discuss some of their research and experiences associated with this project.
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“High Life”: Helping High Risk Urban Teens Create a Weed Prevention Game App
- 1. “High Life” Helping High Risk Urban Teens Create a Pot Prevention Game App
- 2. Introductions • TJ Smith, Program Manager • Real Talk Teens: – Foster – Razz – Ryan – Treson – Thalia • RPI: – Professor Ben Chang – PhD Candidate: Laquana Cooke • Real Talk Staff: – Hannah Gaschott – Kaseem Moultrie – Tek Austin • Tech Valley Game Space – Jamey Stevenson • 1st Playable Productions – Darryl Nunn
- 3. Real Talk Overview • Real Talk: – Black/Latino 13-17 years olds • “High Risk” – Multiple session groups in the community where youth are—have tech will travel • Teens create role model stories via videos, cartoons, music, games, PSAs, etc. • PROCESS NOT PRODUCT • No expectation of behavior change – It still happens naturally! – Tech group—revamping website, in charge of socials – Community Advisory Boards: • Youth are the EXPERTS who advise providers – Tabling, outreach, conferences, etc. – HIV/STI testing
- 4. Community PROMISE – Highly adapted & tailored to our youth. • iStories – Meet all core elements of intervention – Adaptations include: » Tech & personal prevention skill building via group » iStories are tech based made by target demographic for target demographic • Multiple-session; 1 hr., 1x wkly, multiple community locations • Dissemination by teens in person/online
- 6. Chance Cards Your money is tight this month—they cut your hours back at the job. The longer you go without weed, the more tight you feel. What’s that about? Step back 1 square to think about it. Your dad saw your post saying you’d do 5 for 5 with somebody, cause your “n” Chris got that good good. Busted and grounded for a week. Lose a turn. Your teacher says (s)he thinks you’re really smart and could easily go to college. The only that that might get in the way? Your pot smoking. You think about that, decide you really do want to go to college, and cut way back on your smoking. Jump up 3 squares.
- 7. Original Game “Let’s do something different” That’s Devin!
- 8. Project Timeline September 2014 Original Board Game Started November 2014 Original Game Completed December 2014 Search for Collaborators February 2015 RPI Signed On! July 2015 Game App Project Begins March 2016 Final Stages
- 9. RPI, TVGS, 1st Playable, & Real Talk
- 10. Playtesting & Wish Lists • Based on initial brainstorms & playtesting: – Customizable avatars – Earn game play money – Status bars
- 11. Wire- framing
- 12. Construct 2
- 13. Game Jam
- 14. Movements, Events, and Sprites
- 16. First Draft
- 17. Glitches!
- 18. 30 seconds of game play
- 19. Next Steps • Prototype & playtesting • Marketing
- 20. Hit Us Up! • realtalk4teens1317@gmail.com • changb3@rpi.edu • cookel3@rpi.edu • jamey@techvalleygamespace.com • tsmith@alliancefph.org • www.realtalk1317.com • @realtalk1317 (FB, Tw, IG, SC)
Editor's Notes
- TJ Avatars via free MyWebFace app
- TJ These are some of the things we do as part of Real Talk Most important points for all things: We take our programs, meetings, testing, etc. to the teens We bring the technology Our focus is not on making a slick project; it’s on what the teens learn while they are working on the projects Our programs & activities are youth driven—they tell us what they want/need and we figure out how to make it happen and then teach them
- For example, our teens wanted to make a board game, and we had to figure out how make that work with our grant requirements. Our primary intervention, Community PROMISE, has specific requirements. Projects MUST show character(s) thinking about or making change; can include reducing risky/harmful behavior; trained in SoC Must include a character who looks & sounds like our teens, lives and hangs in the same places, and acts like them The risk behavior must be realistic The main character must face a barrier—a social determinant should impact on behavior change The story must have a risk/harm reduction goal in mind and have a positive outcome
- Treson Our focus was on weed. Weed is the most common drug used among teens in our neighborhood and schools. We made random boards, did some creative brainstorming, and decided how we wanted our game to be. We added some Chance cards for the different scenarios about using weed. The cards had to include both negative and positive consequences. Wanted it to be realistic. And they had to include thinking about or changing behavior, or at least cutting back on the behavior. Basic game play: the player rolled the dice, moved forward, landed on a space. If it was a Chance card, the player read a scenario, and followed the directions for that choice. Example: You just lit up with some of your boyz when the police roll up. Lose a turn while you try to explain it to your moms. Took some pics of places like the Public Housing where we live, the park where teens hang & smoke weed, the middle school & high school to be part of the game design.
- Razz Examples of chance cards from our board game. Our language, our culture—important! Real life—what could and maybe did actually happen to one of us Cutting back on weed is one of the choices. Not changing behavior is also a choice
- Foster Devin was our staff back then. We had worked on a lot of video projects and wanted to do something different. We decided to make a board app our of our board game. Wanted game to give teens insight into consequences of marijuana usage throughout high school and figured a game app that everybody could play would help with that. Real Talk staff offered to find somebody who could help us create the app.
- TJ 9/2014 Teens began work on the board game 11/2014 Original board game design completed—had to include PROMISE elements 12/2014 Search for collaborators, 7 colleges, one taker—and Prof. Chang jumped at the chance! 7/15 Game App work begins 3/16 Final review, playtesting To put into perspective—they’ve worked on this project for about 45 hours total—it can take a team of professionals at least a month of working full time to create a game app similar to the one they created.
- Met w/ Prof. Chang—he brought in PhD Candidate, Laquana Cooke, and then Tech Valley Game Space later to assist with the Game Jam, and finally 1st Playable Productions (think Guitar Hero) Prof. Chang and his wife had worked on similar projects w/inner city youth before so they kind of knew what they were getting into. Ms. Cooke was conducting research on amending current game‐based learning (GBL) strategies to address racial/ethnic disparities in STEM Education through a game design pedagogical framework TVGS joined as part of Game Jam and because Prof. Chang asked. 1st Playable came on for technical support and because Ms. Cooke asked And they all came on board because they’re just a little bit crazy.
- Razz Here’s what we did: Ben playtested the game with us: That means we played the original board game to see how it worked—was it too fast? Too slow? Challenging enough? Interesting enough? Brainstormed ways to make it better Decided to create status bars to show how consequences would impact on education, social life, and relationships. Looked at good, bad, negative consequences and created more cards for each of the different categories—friends, employment, family, etc. and gave people choices instead of just random Chance cards We also created a wish list of things we’d want to include on our game app for when we started wireframing.
- Ryan Blueprint of the game, like an architect building a house Sequence through an event—plan carefully, make a rough draft like an essay Wire framing includes mechanics for movement, music for the different elements, what affects the movement like the cards you picks/die roll, the outcome of the cards How are the other elements of the game affected (like the status bars)? Takes a long time because we got really creative after playtesting the original game
- Foster Once the game was planned out, had to have user-friendly software. Free download version of Construct 2 to try it out User friendly, comes with a manual, online training videos. Needed to learn how to use it, and to learn the language used for gaming. Part of learning this software and the language was accomplished through the Game Jam put on at RPI.
- Treson Building Construct 2 Skills for creating the app Use construct 2 for action in the game, art design. Created the design for the board. Game Jam at RPI to help us build our skills; almost 1:1 assistance from RPI & TVGS volunteers Learned about events and the things that impact on them. Learned about sprites, movement, core mechanics of the game. Learned how to use a Bamboo and that I’m really good at art, and now I have one at the B&G Club
- Foster: Programming for movement, not only the avatars, but also the dice, the status bars, etc. Sprites—the art work in the game—like the avatars. Issue with code—wrong letter for movement Razz: Each created own avatars via myWebface. Razz talk about sizing & breaking the game. Entered the game card info to a spreadsheet (Who worked on entering text for game cards? Thalia?)
- TJ Used Google Drive to coordinate between weekly sessions Created spreadsheet for tasks Dropped in the elements of the game as the teens created them Good for coordination among partners Helped ensure we had the needed elements, make quick changes Running lists of items that needed to be added/changed, who was responsible, and due dates
- Ryan Playtesting started in March. These are some screenshots from the original playtesting. Some issues we ran into with the first game: The card information didn’t show up correctly The status boards were missing It was a one player instead of two player game The music and positive consequence/negative consequence sounds didn’t work
- Game background images not included—took pics of local places—high school, park, Steinmetz Housing, RPI, but they weren’t on the board. Instead of the scenario and possible responses, the input for the status bars showed up—a bunch of zeros and 1’s. Foster’s avatar was busy getting high—he flew off the game board! There were weird marks and the words ran off the cards sometimes. Move ahead, move back, lose a turn didn’t work.
- https://dreamlogician.itch.io/highlife?secret=Ni2PkBCYJoZCH6zW3G9d02MDY Who?
- Thalia: Stepped in to the project later. Plans for the future: Playtesting game app—any more glitches? Are people enjoying it? What do they like/not like? Too hard? Too easy? Fixing the glitches, making it better, beta testing with wider audience. Uploading to stores and our teen website Create a marketing video, advertise on social media sites Market to friends & family online and in person Add this to our resumes so if we want, we can get into college or get jobs or both
- Final wrap up