Hacking Visibility
Objective-
- Learners will, building off the work of the previous session, examine who tells (writes, creates) queer stories in popular gaming & TV/Movie/visual/etc culture and analyze the importance of sharing their own queer stories.
- Learners will bring their video game designs to a conclusion, critique and assess each others work, and discuss ways of distributing their games.
Introduction/Rules- Read Rules Go around the circle and say name age and pronoun preference and answer icebreaker: What’s one thing you’d like to see in your lifetime?
Breaking Activity- Learners will create an Artist Statement from the following prompts. The idea here is for it to be low stakes writing, looking for ideas not grammar. Learners can organize and express their ideas however the choose (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, non-rhyming verse, simple comic strip, haiku, etc). As long as they can finish it in the time allotted.
- I am
- I am from
- I am going to
- I will
- I see myself as
- I feel
Afterwards learners will decide if they want to share what they have created with the group and if they wish to pair their statement during the exhibition of their games.
Breaking Discussion- The previous session we talked about how queer stories are told and the tropes and narratives that popular culture is prone to display. In this session learners will consider who tells queer stories? Why do we share our stories? Why are Queer Games important to be shared? How can we share our stories? During this time instructor should steer the conversation towards how the group wishes to exhibit their games (if an exhibition hasn’t already been set up ahead of time).
Maker Activity- Art Making- Learners will spend the time completing their games, creating title screens, credits, adding sound and enhancing level design.
Instructor will show learners how to make self-contained executable files, how to zip them and host them on MediaFire.com. Instructor will also show learners how to create executable html files they can load directly onto websites they create.
Closure- During the closure instructors will lead a reflection of the topics covered during the past session and how the act of “hacking” them may have changed learners’ views on said session topics.
Possible questions: How do the rules of games and societal, institutional and personal rules relate to each other? What is one thing you took away from these workshops? Would you make more games in the future? In what ways are queer games important to gaming & popular culture? Are there any games we looked at you would share with your friends or family?
Materials- Teacher supplies: Laptop, Projector, Wi-fi, GameMaker 8 Pro (to make files executable), Student supplies: Laptops, Game Maker Lite (installed on each laptop), Game Maker Cards (printed or pdf)