Philip (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} philiptan) wrote,@ 2009-05-01 23:31:00 |
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Cyberarts
Today, lots of people visited the lab! It was an open house advertised as part of the Boston Cyberarts/Cambridge Science Festival. We had families testing some of our games and making some new ones with Scratch. Most of the heavy lifting was done by the staff and the grad students, who did an awesome job. I pretty much just played tour guide and host.
Things generally went well, but I made one big faux pas. Keeping with the "arts" theme, we had a collection of games that game journalism had branded as "art", hoping to spark a discussion about the relative aesthetic merits of the games. So I loaded and played a little Bioshock to kill some time while waiting for the first couple of people to show up. Unfortunately, I left it paused in the Xbox 360 when some of the kids started showing up, as I tried to direct them towards the various activities we had set up.
It wasn't long before word got out that we had a copy of Bioshock in the lab and the (very much under 17) kids started demanding to play it. They started getting even more agitated after multiple attempts of failing to defeat Ganondorf. In retrospect, starting the kids out on one of the final boss battles of the Ocarina of Time was probably not a good idea. In a moment of weakness, I conceded and swapped the games, hoping to use Bioshock as an opportunity to talk about Boston game history. It pretty much fell on deaf ears once the bullets started flying, and one of the boys seemed to be pretty freaked out by the grotesque violence of the game.
About 10 minutes later I tried to cut my losses by switching to a different game with less disturbing imagery, but I think one of the other kids was even more freaked out by Parappa. I'm not sure if I was more disappointed by my lack of judgement or my later discovery that some of the kids had already completed Bioshock at home. One of them described the multi-year backstory of the game in precise detail while he fought off two slicers simultaneously.
Generally, though, the families all seemed to have a good time. I hope I haven't scarred the kids for life, or taught them that the first thing you should do upon finding a hypodermic needle is to jam it into your forearm. Then again, we ended the day with Metal Wolf Chaos, so permanent scarring is pretty much assured.
Today, lots of people visited the lab! It was an open house advertised as part of the Boston Cyberarts/Cambridge Science Festival. We had families testing some of our games and making some new ones with Scratch. Most of the heavy lifting was done by the staff and the grad students, who did an awesome job. I pretty much just played tour guide and host.
Things generally went well, but I made one big faux pas. Keeping with the "arts" theme, we had a collection of games that game journalism had branded as "art", hoping to spark a discussion about the relative aesthetic merits of the games. So I loaded and played a little Bioshock to kill some time while waiting for the first couple of people to show up. Unfortunately, I left it paused in the Xbox 360 when some of the kids started showing up, as I tried to direct them towards the various activities we had set up.
It wasn't long before word got out that we had a copy of Bioshock in the lab and the (very much under 17) kids started demanding to play it. They started getting even more agitated after multiple attempts of failing to defeat Ganondorf. In retrospect, starting the kids out on one of the final boss battles of the Ocarina of Time was probably not a good idea. In a moment of weakness, I conceded and swapped the games, hoping to use Bioshock as an opportunity to talk about Boston game history. It pretty much fell on deaf ears once the bullets started flying, and one of the boys seemed to be pretty freaked out by the grotesque violence of the game.
About 10 minutes later I tried to cut my losses by switching to a different game with less disturbing imagery, but I think one of the other kids was even more freaked out by Parappa. I'm not sure if I was more disappointed by my lack of judgement or my later discovery that some of the kids had already completed Bioshock at home. One of them described the multi-year backstory of the game in precise detail while he fought off two slicers simultaneously.
Generally, though, the families all seemed to have a good time. I hope I haven't scarred the kids for life, or taught them that the first thing you should do upon finding a hypodermic needle is to jam it into your forearm. Then again, we ended the day with Metal Wolf Chaos, so permanent scarring is pretty much assured.
