Kids Coding Games To Cope With Racism

A team of Chicago kids coding socially conscious video games in their group Plug-In Studio.

Northern Illinois University professor Steve Ciampaglia and  School of the Art Institute of Chicago professor Kerry Richardson are completely sure that the use of video games in e.g. military recruitment plays a very important role; so they decided to use games to reach their own goals.

 

FIELDWORKS: THE PLUG-IN STUDIO, The Street Arcade from A Blade of Grass on Vimeo.

In 2015, they involved 13 Black teens from Chicago’s South Side to create a series of video games tackling urgent issues of modern society, such as white privilege, police brutality, immigration and peer pressure.

“… not a lot of programmers are people of color, and so you have these white people just programming these games off of stereotypes. Black guys stealing cars and selling drugs. A lot of times, there’s no women involved with all of this,” one of the young developers says.

Kids coding games to make the world better attracted a lot of online attention. Young developers received praise and approval which will definitely motivate them to continue changing the real world through their very simple virtual reality.