In the Assignment #8 email, reference your group’s assignments within this one BRANCH.

Label entries with your group in caps on top (e.g. “STORY”).

Read all your classmates’ entries in order to incorporate their thoughts into yours.

Make as many entries as necessary.

When you come into class, BRING HARD COPIES OF ALL WRITINGS (in 16 pt font) / PICTURES / DRAWINGS and pin them on the board. We’ll work on this tapestry in class.

STORY GROUP

Assignments for Story group:
• Develop content around this story. First of all, write it within a sci-fi setting in 250 words. Determine the precise location. Describe the world. Describe the character of the protagonist, the guide and the false guide.
• Assign 3 details to each part of the story (e.g. Beginning: Home-made lunch. Middle: Shoes with holes.)
• Finally, from the protagonist’s point of view, write 5 short messages for each part of the story. (E.g., a “Beginning” message from the protagonist could be a thank you card to family. A “Middle” message could be a street sign on a cardboard box.)

COMMUNITY GROUP

Assignments for Community group:
• Develop ways to draw people in. (Email? Call? First thing they see?)
• How will you debrief with the participants?
• How will you document the experience to share with others beyond those in attendance? (E.g. photos, participant responses, etc.)
• Finally, beyond what we are able to do in this class, closely watch your classmates’ entries on BRANCH and determine how you would scale the experience. Identify a similar, successful experience out in the world and point out 3 ways yours could reach a 1M+ audience.

EXPERIENCE GROUP
Assignments:
• What do you want someone to come out of this with? What do you want them to feel and do?
• Blueprint (e.g. Paul draws out on paper) 3 ways that this experience could work. Pick the best and continue to work on that:
• Identify the core mechanic (e.g. participant must share information with a guide in order to progress)
• Decide the main way that story content will come across to the user (e.g. messages attached to the protagonist’s possessions)
• Write a detailed user flow that determines how to execute the alternate ending (e.g. Participant arrives. A guide invites her to sit at the table….)
• Identify three production elements that tell the story (e.g. lighting gets darker throughout)

PRODUCTION/TECH GROUP

Assignments for Production group (If u can't upload pics here, just bring them to class):
• Decide where the experience will be run and say why. Scout the location, share photos with the class and secure the space for 6-10pm on Wednesday, Dec 5.
• Detail cool aspects of the space that could inspire your classmates. Again, share photos.
• For production elements, please carefully follow what your classmates are saying on BRANCH. What MATERIALS can you provide for them to help produce their vision? (e.g. gels, boom box, fabric, fans, confetti, cool cards, sci-fi objects, etc.) Please bring in 15 printed pictures of materials you know you have access to. Write the BRANCH ideas they relate to on the print-outs.

COMMUNITY GROUP
The traditional way to drawn people in would be to use Facebook, Twitter and other social medias so we could reach our own friends on campus. For a broader audience and if we want to promote our experience beforehand, we could also use The Columbia Daily Spectator as it has a wide reach among CU students, faculty and staff. Also, I'm a big fan on the idea of using a QR code (either by posting it on social medias, publishing it in The Spectator or by putting up posters all over campus) to intrigue people and have them actively become part of the experience.

Example of a QR code: bit.ly
It is based on the part of Deadrick's story where he said that he was taken out from school and when he returned home, all of his belongings were out on the lawn.

COMMUNITY GROUP
To document the experience, we should try to photos document all the various details and steps of the experience, as well as the reactions of some users (as many as we can) to each step of the experience. We should also try to record all the data created during the experience, including but not limited to: how the story is told, what type of media are we using, what's the timing of each element or gameplay, how the user evolve through the experience, what's the user call of action... etc.
Robert pratten wrote an interesting article on how to document transmedia projects here: bit.ly

COMMUNITY GROUP
For the participants' debrief, it could be interesting to have them talk about what they liked about the experience, what they didn't like about it, what confused them, what troubled them... etc. but also ask them how they think we could to improve it.
I would also be very curious to know, in the debrief, at what time (if any) did they realized that they were actually "living" the life of a foster child, what was their reaction to this realization and if that made them want to do something about this issue.

COMMUNITY GROUP
A somehow similar, very successful experience is the Conspiracy for Good, designer by Tim Kring (the creator of the television show 'Heroes') and Open Hood (they also made Collapsus).
They developed the idea of "Social Benefits Storytelling" by putting together a team of artists and thinkers dedicated to "fight the forces of social and environmental injustice" and "meet the needs of real people". The idea behind their experience was to create a community of active members that focus on "changing the world for the better, one person and one action at a time".
conspiracyforgood.com

COMMUNITY GROUP
In one of their experience, the Conspiracy for Go told the story of an artist who's plan to create a library in Zambia got thwarted by a big corporation. Through this experience that took place in London in 2010, they were able to build 5 libraries in Zambia, to fund 50 scholarships for girls and donate 10,000 books so the experience had a real impact on the world.
Here is the video of the experience: bit.ly
It also makes me realize that we should also film our experience!

COMMUNITY GROUP
I believe that if we want our experience to reach a much larger audience (one million or more), we should:
- Plan the experience on a much larger scale, in several cities instead of just on campus, and creates more interactions and games with so that the users will care more about the experience.
- Do a broader advertising campaign to read a much wider and mainstream audience.
- Give rewards to incite more people and to make them worth the time that they're spending doing our experience. It doesn't have to be material rewards but we should give our users some kind of a payoff to thank them for their time and effort.

PRODUCTION/TECH GROUP:
I definitely feel at a slight disadvantage because I literally only have this class on campus (all others are in midtown), so I really don't know the campus very well. That being said, I think somewhere that could feel like a home (i.e. with couches for a sitting area, a kitchen) could be ideal because it could replicate the "home" idea and all that that symbolizes (security, warmth, family, safety etc...). OR we could go in a totally different direction by having just one large room and siphon off areas of it for the user to move thru. And then we create the environment ourselves (making it a home or school or wherever).

PRODUCTION/TECH GROUP:
As far as where on campus I am sorta at a loss. I really only know Dodge, and while there are numerous rooms there, they may not be the right environment?

As far as the actual items we may need for props and such, I (as a theater student) have access to the prop room at Columbia (we just have to sign out the props, and sign them back in). And unless someone has already reserved them, there are a lot of random items there. Once we determine what we need, if they cannot be found elsewhere, I can see what the props room has.

PRODUCTION/TECH GROUP:
Julie's example of QR code is definitely nice. I am also a big fan of QR code, which is easy to build (especially without budget...) and nicely compressing information. We can use it to convey messages to participants. Otherwise we can monitor the location of them by it, too. While enter a room, participants are required to scan the QR code on the door, which triggers an email or SMS to our Address or Number. (Of course, we need to gather their information before the experiences start.) However, the prerequisite is that every users have a device that meats our demand. How do we solve this problem? Do we require everyone setup an app? Or the best solution is to lend them devices for game use, but that's a bit ambitious

STORY GROUP:
One option, not extremely sci-fi but a little dystopic future.

(BEGINNING) The setting is a city/urban area in an alternate universe, or sometime in the distant future, where because of a nuclear holocaust resources like food and water are scarce and mortality rates are high from starvation. Everyone is struggling to survive, but most are muddling through with relative normality, e.g. scavenging for food, safety in numbers/family. Remnants of the government is doing experiments on land to fix the resource problem. Every month, it does a lottery and picks a section of the city for new land testing area, and the residents are kicked out and sorted to different holding facilities based on their ages (adults vs children).

STORY GROUP:
(BEGINNING CONT'D) Children found parentless by government patrols are also placed in the facilities. Children (like the protagonist) are allowed to bring just one belonging with them; the rest get scavenged by people living in surrounding areas. Possible item: home-made toys

(MIDDLE) The holding facility for children is sterile, very white and devoid of personality or character, like one of those bleach-smelling mental institutions. The children are assigned numeric IDs and cared for on very basic needs (food, water, shelter), but every child gets exactly the same small meal, wears the same small clothing, follows the same daily schedules. They are made indistinguishable from one another.

STORY GROUP:
(MIDDLE CONT'D) They have no freedom; they can’t leave the facility and have very limited interactions with other children there and with staff. The staff quality varies. Some genuinely want to help and get to know the children, e.g. companionship, teach them life skills to prepare them for when they age out of the facility and have to go back to the survivalist real world (guides). Others want to take advantage of them, such as by selling kids’ identities or stealing their food and selling it on the black market (false guides). Possible item: facility uniform (looks like white hospital gown)

STORY GROUP:
(END) Some kids try to escape the facility before they come of age. Others leave as soon as possible because the restrictive environment was ostracizing and oppressive. Still others decide to stay and become staff at the facility and help newer displaced kids coming in, serving as guides. But once you leave the facility, you can’t come back, and you’re on your own in the resource-scarce world, with no safety net or support. Most kids don't survive. Possible item: ID card for those who become new guides with a name on it, not just the number assigned to the kid when he/she entered the facility

STORY GROUP:

BEGINNING MESSAGES:
I’ll be home with dinner soon.
I love you.
Our family (caption under a drawing)
I’m so grateful to have you here with me.
If we’re together, we can overcome anything.

MIDDLE MESSAGES (scribbled or carved discreetly under beds and tables, etc.):
I feel so alone here.
I miss my family.
Nobody cares what happens to us.
This facility is like a prison.
One of the staff gave me a hug today; I finally feel like someone sees me.

STORY GROUP:

END MESSAGES:
I wish I’d never left.
I don’t need anyone’s help to survive.
I am confident that I now have what it takes to help others like me.
I don’t regret my time at the holding facility.
I am going to die alone. Ever since the lottery that destroyed my life, everything has been one long, downward trajectory.

*If we go with the above story option, we can make the world more specific with slang words (e.g. the slang for kids at the facility could be something like The Nameless) and area names (e.g. Facility 284).

STORY GROUP:
So I had a different premise that I just finished (sorry!) At least we'll have several ideas on the table to discuss when we meet on Wednesday?

I see this world’s aesthetic as Dieselpunk-ish (en.wikipedia.org --think sky captain and the world of tomorrow), so lots of dark machinery. In this world, there is some new dystopian global order, and everyone is plugged into some Orwellian system of surveillance and mind control. Over the dark techno landscape is a subversive society in hot air balloons that has plotted to level the entire planet and start from scratch, evacuating and spending time in their space balloons outside the atmosphere.

Our protagonist accidentally falls in with this group by being mistakenly collected at their launch site. Their struggle at this point will be to understand their situation and overcome the shock of the abrupt change of environment, and realizing how toxic his/her former situation was.
The third section will be when they return to earth after their attack, and making a home for themselves on the new, empty earth.

COMMUNITY:
I really like what we have going so far. A dieselpunk approach to the story is both exciting and relevant to the marginalizing/alienating aspects of the foster care experience. And the QR code would be an useful way to manage our data; I only wonder if it might be too cumbersome to set up, given the short time we have left to finish this project.

COMMUNITY
Toyin, a QR code is very easy to do! Try to scan the one I created earlier and see for yourself :) However, I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you say that we should use it to manage our data. Initially, I thought we should use it to advertise the experience and incite people to join.

COMMUNITY:
With regard to outreach, I agree with Julie that social media is a useful place to start. And since one of our goals is to make this a sustainable experience, we can keep an FB page (or some such page) as a living artifact of our storyworld. People can refer to this page long after our first run on campus, post messages about what it felt like to be a foster kid for 30 min. (or however long this experience will last). I'd love to see messages along the lines of how visitors plan to redirect their experience in our storyworld into positive/compassionate actions toward foster kids and the communities that support them. People thinking hard about how to be advocates of improving the foster care system.

PRODUCTION/TECH
I don't know why, but Branch is not letting me dump pictures here. Regardless, I will bring what I have to class tomorrow, but I have the ability to bring to class/experience:

-a teddy bear
-a copy of the children's book "GOODNIGHT MOON"
-a toy horse figurine
-two flashlights
-a Canon HD small portable video camera
-a tripod (I don't own it, but have access to one with enough head's up).

I am going to think of more things I may have that may be useful, but that's a start.

Julie, had no idea it would be so simple to set up. Thanks for clarifying.

My questions now are about access and dealing with reluctant participants. Using QR codes would require smartphone owners [and smartphone owners alone] to download an app they know little about. First, since one of our original goals is to make this an inclusive (non-alienating/marginalizing) experience, targeting smartphone users (the highest-paying mobile consumers around) cuts off potentially interested people with "crappier" phones. If we go with the QR code there should be at least as many points of access for people with basic phones or none at all. We might stay more consistent with our larger values/goals that way.

Then I wonder if requiring potential participants to download an app. would scare them away. But I guess my entire point is not that we shouldn't use QR, just that it should come second to other forms of outreach.

COMMUNITY:
Three weeks ago our group discussed the possibility of setting up an interactive blog to attract participants, so it's a discussion we'll probably continue next week. We might eventually send links to the blog to friends, family, and other people in the CU community.

COMMUNITY:
Finally attended Sleep No More last Friday and loved it. But without the two souvenirs I took away from the experience (a mask and a playing card that served as my "room key"), it would have felt exactly like a dream. This tells me a little about the value of giving participants physical objects they can use to keep themselves connected to our storyworld. In lieu traditional advertisements (or in addition), how about giving participants "keys" (they don't have to be literal keys) to the story? We can distribute these randomly on campus and use them to generate curiosity. They'd feature all the info participants would need to know about the time and place.

Debriefing can take the form of short, casual interviews at the end of participants' experiences-- as well as details on where to go (blog, FB page) to share. It would also be fantastic to incorporate video and photography somehow, interview/capture participants at the end of their experiences.

In its reduced form, the message that the Experience group agreed on in our meeting was: isolation. We discussed this within the context of a larger objective (one of my group mates will elaborate?) and we believe this core emotion illustrates the foster-child experience, whether the outcome was positive, as in Deadrick’s case, or otherwise.

In Deadrick’s case, isolation seemed an appropriate characterization because his experience following his being evicted from his home were marked by isolation from other family members (mother separated from sons), isolation from a place (spending nights on couches, floors, basements, streetsides), and also isolation from any sense of agency, that is, he felt helpless. For Deadrick finding community in the form of a group home provided respite from the isolation, and his situation improved.

Then we looked at the example Deadrick gave us of youth aging out of foster care. He described their outlook as: ‘Me against the world’, which we again reduced to isolation. In this case isolation from the group home or government help (in whatever forms, Deadrick mentioned college scholarships among other things). Deadrick seemed to touch on the reality that such an individualist perspective was actually hindering rather than helping. Again, the means of escaping isolation is to find community. Or rather, community leads to the more successful of the two outcomes.

So, from isolation as a core emotion there naturally emerges two outcomes: stay isolated or find a community. We decided to shape the game dynamic around this idea of isolation >> choice >> positive or negative outcome. The mechanic: participant reaches a better end result through cooperating with others (finding a community) opposed to acting alone.

We are therefore looking for game mechanics that necessitate cooperation. One idea is to isolate senses. Say we have an end goal where it is necessary for the participant to both see and hear (perhaps a maze with audible instructions), but we’ve blindfolded one participant but also given that person headphones with recorded instructions (thereby taking away hearing from the other participant). Perhaps each participant could navigate the maze to their own ending (a lesser prize) but they could also navigate it to a greater prize (combined ending). This would encourage cooperation.

As far as putting a human face on the story, one idea is to have a pre-recorded video of Deadrick describing his own positive experience as the end video for the people who cooperated, and another pre-recorded video of a less successful foster care story (whether from the foster care child or otherwise, perhaps even some of the facts shared in class) as the alternative ending for the people who acted alone.

Oops, EXPERIENCE.

COMMUNITY

Priorities
1) getting people in the door (can someone clarify if this experience has been moved indoors? I think an indoor experience lends itself better to the scifi theme; also we won't be freezing outside.)
2) help participants become content creators of their experience
3) get participants to share content during/post-experience (which can be facilitated by debriefing)

COMMUNITY

It's gonna take a lot to get Columbia students to participate in a mostly unknown experience, the week before finals. To get people "in the door", I suggest we segment our audience into at least 2 groups:

1) students with specialized interest in media/narrative/experience/etc

Since this is a university, we could target groups of students with similar academic interests. Most programs and students groups have listserves and can probably help us advertise this event to a more specific audience.

2) general student population

Flyers
campus media: spec, Bwog
university event calendars
CCSC, ESC listserves

Goal: create as many touch points for students as possible

COMMUNITY

Targeted outreach:

*Academic Programs*
film/theatre majors (undergrad and grad)
Journalism school
Instructional Technology and Media (Teacher's college)
Columbia University School of Social Work

*Student Groups*
Columbia Community Outreach
Community Impact

COMMUNITY

A short URL might work better on our promotional material than QR codes:
1) aesthetically, QR codes (white/black pixels) don't evoke emotions that prompt action (aka scanning the QR code)
2) most smartphones need a third-party app to scan it
3) the small percentage of people who've actually scanned QR codes are generally disappointed by what's on the other end, which accounts for a drop-off in use
4) still too obscure for a user's FIRST contact with the experience

(more reasons outlined here:
mashable.com)
but I think it could be an interesting case study of how Columbia students engage with QR codes

COMMUNITY

Measuring reach

I think we can scale the reach of this experience to 1M+ by

1) leveraging the social networks of experience designer (us) and participants

2) targeting influencers on fb/twitter

see: hashtracking, other social metric tools

COMMUNITY

Getting participants to share content

1) removing essentially all barriers to entry/go where the audience is
Facebook page might be the easiest online location to capture user generated content given our resource constraints. Tumblr is another possibility.

2) make it simple
make specific asks (2-3 at most) and provide examples

3) make the experience compelling enough to share and/or build in a social sharing component

COMMUNITY

encouraging twitter use

what about making a twitter feed the official newswire of the game? participants would use it to get pertinent info, or the game might call for interactivity with this twitter account. This would also facilitate tweets about the experience and provide a digital record of gameplay.

COMMUNITY

marketing framework

I did some very informal market research on what it would take to get students to go to this event (other than free food). One friend brought up a good point: she prefers going to events put on established groups. Our challenge: communicate how this experience would add value if they participated.

I think another central question in our event marketing would be: how much info about this experience do we release, and when?

EXPERIENCE

As the Experience Group, we felt that it was essential to identify the purpose of this venture in its simplest terms. With so many wonderful ideas floating around that approach the foster care experience from difficult angles, it is difficult to progress as a unit and design a cohesive activation. We hope this, and other thoughts you may have in a similar vein, will help us generate ideas that are all completely parallel both thematically and functionally.

EXPERIENCE

Objective: To personalize and individualize the issues surrounding the foster care experience. (This serves to give people the opportunity to examine aspects of their own lives in relation to those who have been through the foster care system and awards them a sense of agency within world they may have never considered)

Approach: Allow participants to interface with representations of core issues within the foster care system.

EXPERIENCE

Tactic: Design an encounter that forces the user to experience a form of sudden and complete isolation. The task given to them must require the collaboration of an impossibly difficult to find support system thus emphasizing the sense of being lost, disconnected and alone. The inevitable struggle can then be designed to then evoke a sense of loneliness, helplessness, and the eventual comfort of an ally. (As a group, we feel the need to focus on this particular feeling that seems to be at the core of the foster care experience)

EXPERIENCE

Fundamental Action Within the Experience: To navigate the various obstacles in finding the necessary support system required to complete the task successfully. (We would like to get to the point where as a class, all of our experience design ideas have a basic mechanic such as this one.)

EXPERIENCE

EXPERIENCE

One Recommendation (the rough sketch of an experience design):
Participants are arbitrarily placed into color coded groups. Each group convenes at a designated home base for a brief period in which they introduce one another. It is explained to them that they are a group competing against other groups. Each member of the group is given some sort of piece or pieces of a puzzle that the group must use together in order to reach a solution (this can literally be a puzzle or some sort of alphanumeric codec that can only be solved when inputting data from everyone's individual sheet). During this time the group begins to work together and bond while completing this assignment under the assumption that they must...

do it faster and/or more accurately than the other groups. I suggest that there is food and other comforts to help them relax, have fun, and get closer to one another. Team spirit must be high and they have to believe in this groups ability to win. Suddenly, the facilitator of the group (the person on our side who is in charge) discovers that they all must vacate that space immediately because that room is no longer reserved for them. They have to leave the food and the other things we've given them behind (I would suggest not making them leave their own personal belongings behind but perhaps some small items we awarded them up to this point.) Continued...

Now, each member of the group is given a card with a location on it that points to somewhere on campus. They are told that they must go to this location as a starting point and then work to find all the other members of their group so that they can complete the puzzle together (we can figure out a way to make sure they actually check in where they were supposed to and also that they are not able to communicate with people in their group via phone or email. What we can do is figure out a way in which it would be possible for them to find each other but this should still be very difficult) Continued...

They are told how long they have to find all the people in their group who are now scattered across campus and are given a time and location in which to return. The group who managed to find the most of its members and consequently solve most of its puzzle wins. (We can also consider offering participants the option of attempting to complete the puzzle alone and design it such that the results of attempting this would be disastrous.)
Continued...

This is an initial outline and I imagine that we could build on this simple mechanic.
The basic idea here is that participants will have built a support system not unlike a family in which each member plays a crucial part in an effort to achieve something. They should feel at home in the initial "home base" location of the group and should be feeling secure in their ability to complete the task and win. Participants should feel a real loss when forced out of their space and an even heavier loss when split up and made to find each other in order to win. This experience could really embody that of the foster care system and will give us the opportunity to allow people to interface with small scale versions of some key issues.

PRODUCTION/TECH
Guys. Sounds like there is a debate over QR code... In the experience, I do like the QR code, but I am just worried about the device problem during the experience. Just like what Toyin said. For propagation, we can simply use all the methods. Both QR code and URL. For an electronic version, of course, URL is better, while in hard copy(if we need), we will use QR code.

Otherwise, I suggest to develop a blog (website) for the experience, integrating FB & Twitter API to post all our articles, new feeds and pics on a single website. Of course, there will be a page for introducing the experience and story. It's a HTML CSS JavaScript thing, and I think I can handle that.

In conclusion, the prospective contents of the website I have seen up to now:
1. Our new feeds on FB, Twitter. (using API)
2. Brief intro to our experience. (for early propagation)
3. Details of our experience and some pics (after running that).
4. Our crew! ( surely including Lance and Atley : ) )
Then, I guess every of us can access it and easily introduce our experience to others by simply show them the website.

If anyone thinks that can be other functions, just tell me or post it.

STORY GROUP
I liked Joyce`s idea of giving numeric IDs to people. Maybe we can also use these numeric IDs in puzzles that participants will have to solve within the game (as J is talking about). For setting I think Hannah`s idea is a good one. The one I had in mind was more like the setting in Blade Runner: confusing, maze-like, cold and deserted.
I was thought maybe we can start the game in an already isolated place- a place like the hatchery and conditioning center in Brave New World. We can also set up an announcement that people will constantly hear about the rules they have to abide by. They can use their time in this “center” to get to know each other and share as much as possible with each other to build friendship.

STORY GROUP
continuing...
This is going to be the place where they actually share their stories with each other. The stories will be at a very basic level and will be provided for them on cards at the beginning of the game- they will tell each other who they are, where they were born and some specific information that a friend might know. In the later phases of the game the team will be separated and they will need these information to find and help each other out- for example, maybe to help a friend whose identity is stolen and used by another person. We can leave – or have players leave- some traces like objects, messages or some kind of sign that they can use to track each other and help both themselves and their friends out.

STORY GROUP
The players can also use this first room for storing food. We can make them leave immediately and take as much food as possible and complete the game before the food is over- if possible.

After they are separated the players will be treated as fugitives and will be searched everywhere. There will be good guides and bad guides to lead them. To understand whether the guide is a good one or a bad one, they can use a test like the empathy test in Blade Runner/ Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”. I mean it doesn`t have to be an empathy test exactly like the one in the film or the book, but some way to figure out if the guide should be trusted or not.

STORY GROUP
And also players have to be very careful and strategic about which information should be shared with whom. In each section of the maze or in each room we can have them get certain roles or experience different situations: a student, a homeless person, someone invisible to other people, with a family s/he doesn`t know and they will have to adapt themselves to these abrupt changes. Besides, they can`t go back into a room once they leave it and there is more than one door in one room that they will not be so sure what is behind. The guides- both the good and the bad ones- can be hidden amongst the people players will encounter in these rooms.

STORY GROUP
I am hoping that this is not too confusing. If it is, I would be more than happy to try to clarify in class.
(munire)

PRODUCTION/TECH

I've scouted Lerner today as a possible location and will bring in the information regarding booking. It's pretty expansive and has a lot of potential depending on our needs. It's also a popular undergraduate location as there are many classes held there and it's near both the library and the bookstore.

COMMUNITY GROUP

We're doing really well with ideas for story and experience. One concern I'm beginning to have is about the accuracy of our depictions of life for foster children. We've learned that while being a foster kid can be dystopic hell on earth, it can also be closer to what Deadrick shared with us: full of challenges, several disadvantages, but not fundamentally very different from the lives of other people.

It seems that one of the biggest questions we'll have to address is how to reconstruct the Highly Variable nature of life for an American foster kid, over an exceptionally short space of time.

People like Deadrick strike me as young people with the life experience of people three times their age. It isn't after all, that we all aren't alienated/marginalized/defrauded/coerced against our wills at some point in our lives. It's that usually, by the time this all happens, we're well past our eighteenth birthdays.
So is there a way to replicate the highly condensed existential and physical trauma of being a foster kid through clever uses of time an space? If we think more in terms of time-- giving participants access to privilege for a few minutes, or even seconds, then revoking it with no explanation at all. Sort of a constant cycle of granting and seizing privileges, could this help us to get our message (more accurately) across?

Also, another major issue for foster children--a bigger issue than for most other people, I'm imagining--would be identity. As wards of the state, foster kids are compelled to live in artificially constructed families, with guardians who are compensated for "raising" them. What does it feel like to be known to your foster family as a ward of the state, as a foster kid, who arrives in their guardian's eyes with a stock narrative of suffering and trauma, before they're known as individuals? What does it feel like to be placed (constantly) in the position of defending your identity in ways other children never are? How can we reproduce this challenge of constantly having to tell your own story before other people tell it for you?

I guess this addresses Deadrick's anecdote about the girl at his school who cautioned another girl not to date a guy who lived in a group home. I noticed that he seemed upset with the barrage of assumptions that come with being labeled a foster kid/young person without a family. So again, how to reproduce the experience of constantly having to defend your individuality, your true identity. Instead of assuming the socially-imposed identity of a tragic John Doe.

EXPERIENCE
The takeaway from what J. discussed: Participants who succeed in the experience will experience rewards from cooperation, from creating community and forging connections with other participants, and their experience will be the richer for it.
Participants who do not forge these links, follow the wrong guides, will find themselves shut out, more isolated, less capable of divining the correct path for them to take.
Effectively, we want a part of the message to be encouraging reliance on a community that can support you, rather than one with different goals than your own.

EXPERIENCE
A large part of our discussion also centered on creating a basic mechanic or game design that the story could be layered on to. One of them was the idea of the changing/impaired maze. Participants are blindfolded or otherwise cut off from a sense or an ability (no talking, only walk sideways, etc.) and must find an individual who can help them escape the maze. Individuals trying to solve the maze on their own will find it harder and harder, as the maze changes in shape and size. If participants make it to the end, they will get a reward based on who they partnered with (ie, more suitable guides/partners will deliver more suitable rewards).

EXPERIENCE

As my group members mentioned, our goal is to allow participates to experience the core issues in the life of foster care kids. Among the feelings of mistrusting, helpless, hopeless, etc. we want the participates to feel isolated. The action we want them to take is to find people on their side that they can trust, to build a support team, meanwhile also provide support to their team members.

We’d like to design the game as a maze/puzzle and generate two endings. Each participate will have a personal goal to fulfill. But to reach the personal ending, one needs to decide whether they seek help or do it alone. For example, each participate is only allowed to have one sense - seeing, hearing, or speaking. The one that can only see has the choice of follow the signs and judge where to go. However he won’t be able to listen to all the warnings or vocal signals. It’s up to the team if they’d like to work together to have the best plan considering everyone’s information or finish the mission alone, which seems more efficient.

As for the positive ending, participates walk out of the maze /puzzle by cooperating and contributing to their team work, with a feeling that by giving and obtaining support, it’s hopeful for foster kids to live a better life.

On the other hand, participates fail to reach their personal/collective goal, will leave the game with a feeling that it’s miserable and difficult to live a life without support and trust. Thus it’s necessary for the public to care and give to the foster care kids, to change their life together.

p.s. My request was pending and Atley just added my email address during the break