Project Demo
Patrick Jagoda
Assistant Professor of English, University of Chicago
Seed Lynn
Project Manager for the Game Changer Chicago
Biographies
Patrick Jagoda is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Chicago.Jagoda has worked on several projects related to digital storytelling, transmedia game design, and new media learning.
Seed Lynn is project manager for the Game Changer Chicago initiative. He has also worked as project manager for the Carpetbag Theatre (Knoxville, TN), as a consultant for the Center for Digital Storytelling (Berkeley, CA), and as a multi-media specialist in several contexts.
Abstract
Game Changer Chicago is an interdisciplinary initiative that explores health learning through workshops in which high school aged youth — recruited primarily from underserved schools on the south side of Chicago — collaborate on digital stories and game projects. The Lucidity transmedia game, developed in July 2012 and released in December 2012, approaches sexual and emotional health through a single narrative made up of video, photography, comics, websites, digital games, and other media. Lucidity is, at once, a piece of electronic literature, an interactive world, and a digital game. It is also an attempt to transform the future of sexual and reproductive health education through new narratives and new media.
Through the 2012 Lucidity workshop, youth acquired media literacy and contributed to this narrative-driven game that seeks to introduce their peers to complex health systems. Digital media tools reinforced the educational principle of “connected learning” that organized this workshop. Throughout the project, adults mentored youth in creative processes. The finished project, Lucidity (http://luciditygame.com/), begins with a cinematic introduction and tells the story of Zaria, a young woman who struggles to come to terms with ongoing relationship difficulties and her own history as a survivor of sexual violence. The player follows Zaria as she navigates a transmedia dream world and delves deeper into her past. In this demo, we invite conference participants to play the finished Lucidity game. We will also discuss the workshop and post-production methods that produced this learning game.