I showed my first semester Major Studio One project, School the System, which is a game about the school to prison pipeline and how school discipline policies can severely impact a student’s future.
Through demoing my game, I learned something really important about concept and experience that I think applies directly to my thesis. While my concept and idea was pretty solid, the experience of the game was more tedious than enjoyable for my participants. A strength of the game was that the play was based on policy decisions, but a weakness was that it read like a policy.
Considering that my thesis is based on understanding symptoms of toxic stress, I think it will be very important for me to make the experience enjoyable or at least captivating for the student involved. While this is a tool for education, it still needs to be captivating and engaging so that the user will have a better experience and will be likely to remember it more.
Cat Schmitz 