EP 55: Games Over Gangs (Encore)
Here's an encore of a favorite: Games Over Gangs. Those dang video games. Can't pull the kids away from them. And there's one city using that to its advantage -- with an innovative partnership that's actually teaching video game development to local youths from a rough neighborhood (yes, they jumped at the offer to become game developers), affording them a break from an anxious environment and setting them up with a sweet professional skill that can open big doors: computer coding, which has tons of (well-paying) applications. On this episode, we meet the program's creators and some impressive kids who are boosting prospects and expressing real-life (and often tough) experiences through the games they create. With, on the host's part, some reminiscing about old-school Sierra games. Show notes Games Over Gangs info and donation site - https://www.gofundme.com/antigang-gaming-programing NCSU Game2Learn Lab - http://eliza.csc.ncsu.edu/people.html Technician (NCSU student newspaper) story - http://www.technicianonline.com/news/article_e926670c-5c50-11e7-82c9-dfe6870c4bb5.html Space Quest III - https://youtu.be/yTZzFN8ilG0 Pulseboy (used to compose some of the oldschool video game music heard in this episode) http://www.pulseboy.com
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Transcript
Hey, everybody. It's Ben. We're gonna run an encore episode, quite possibly my favorite one, as we work on other projects and new episodes. This one we're about to hear centers on a program, a camp, that brings in kids from rough parts of town and teaches them coding, a skill they can use to develop video games. But it's not just about video games. I mean, it's an in demand life professional skill. Just such a cool thing as you'll hear from my interviews with the kids involved and with the organizers, including Ron L. Robinson, who I just caught up with. And he told me this program is still going great. And matter of fact, they just graduated a new class of kids this past Friday. So let's get to it from almost a year ago. Here's Games Over Gangs. And at the very end, after the credits, we'll have a quick update on how the camp went this year.
On this episode of Being a Spool Equation. Me and Chris Cole met in the parking lot during the day and discussed how can we help the kids and figure out a program that the kids will utilize and help them. So he asked me what do they like to do, and I'm like, all the kids do now is play video games. So we took it from that. There's a lot of stuff that can happen in these games. You can die. You can get arrested. You can get away.
It's a lot of stuff. So the topic for their final project is on their living
environment, their surroundings. I had to, like, run through
my own neighborhood just to get home before anything was bad was to happen to me. You thought this was over? This is just the beginning. Hope you do well.
Games over gangs. Kids from a rough neighborhood learn to code and develop video games that take on their realities, potentially alter their entire future. My name is Ben Brown, and this is Municipal Equation, a podcast about cities and towns and changing times from the North Carolina League of Municipalities, episode 32. In 1989, when I was nine years old, my life changed when my computer junkie father gave me a copy of a video game. A game that I begged for, called Space Quest three, from a company called Sierra Games. The main character, whose name is Roger Wilco, is a janitor, who's gotten himself into some trouble in space, and he has to sort of shamble his way to heroism. He's ultimately supposed to save two kidnapped video game developers. They're called the two guys from Andromeda. And this game blew my mind. For the time period, it was amazing. Huge, chunky pixels, and as much as 16 colors on the screen. Seriously, for that time, it was amazing. And so was the depth of the game. Even though the plot might sound a little bit stupid in the way I described it, this game was the best of the best when it came out in 1989. The writing was hilarious. It presented the player all kinds of problems to solve by way of your own creativity and ability to connect dots and clues and make use of the tools around you. This is not like an arcade game. It was a revolutionary, long term commitment, and it made you think. No exaggeration, it taught me critical thinking, and it shaped my sense of humor as a combination of dry and absurd. But one thing I didn't really think about critically until much later, even though it was definitely front and center in my mind at the time, was that it made the actual developers of the game, of the Space Quest series, heroes of mine. The two guys from Andromeda, the kidnapped video game developers that the main character has to rescue, Well, those were the developers, Mark Crowe and Scott Murphy. They put themselves in the game as characters, and so anybody who grew to love Space Quest grew to love the people who actually made the game. And so Crowe and Murphy became common names in those circles, which, as far as I know, is pretty different, especially for that time. Pictures of Crowe and Murphy were in tons of computing and gaming magazines back in the day, and I ripped those pages out and put them on my wall, next to pictures of people like Tony Hawk. And keep thinking about that. Game developers. People who wrote code on old school computers. Being undeniable heroes for kids. So, fast forward to now. I'm not really much of a gamer these days. I still like the stuff from the late eighties, early nineties, but, you know, modern gaming clearly is, like, the biggest thing on the planet right now. It's social. It's intense. It has huge investments in it. It sparked a lot of debate, but it's absolutely here, and it continues to grow, and it's a big, big money making industry. And kids are totally engaged with it. So if you get good enough to develop video games like the big gaming companies want, then you stand to make some cash. And from one angle, it starts from learning how to code. Well, just recently, I walked into a computer lab at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where coding is being taught to a group of young kids from a tough neighborhood, the kind of neighborhood where a realistic scenario is that they get involved with gangs. And you can fill in the blank from there. But these kids do not want that. They do not want to be assimilated into trouble. And they're vocal about it. They want better. So I went to talk to them about that.
Yeah. So my name is Yihuan Dong. Yihuan is a PhD student at NC State. I study in computer science, especially in,
the development of educational games. Which makes him perfect to help out with this kind of initiative. So this summer,
I decided to stay in lab and help out with organizing this, coding camp for these kids.
Ehon said the idea for the camp came to him via the Raleigh Police Department, looking for a way to give kids something to do, something to divert them from the kind of lifestyle that they might otherwise fall into. They have this hope that,
we can offer something to the kids. So on one side, it can stay keep them busy, and on the other side, can learn something about computer science, learn a useful skill for their, that might change their life.
So the kids started out with some very simple coding programs, like one called Scratch, to teach basic concepts of coding in production.
You can easily make a small game, interactive game, like Super Mario Bros, and make the Flappy Bird, the, Brick Breaker
kind of game with it. One of the first video games they learned to make was, appropriately, something like Pong.
But they've been able to move on to more intellectual and creative coding as well. Yeah. And then now some of them are able to make a flappy bird game on their own, which is really cool.
This isn't meant to just be a temporary thing. Like Yihuan told us earlier, these are potentially life changing skills. These kids have to take the current context of their daily lives and fold that into the outcome of this class. So the topic for their final project is
on, their living, living environment, their surroundings, and their hopes for their lives and stuff. So just so that we can other people that comes to their game we we will have a game expo at the end of this event. So we're going to invite people from the universities, people from the industries, and to come to see what games they're capable of making, and also to inform the public that they're about their living conditions, and hopefully that more help will be given to these kids in the future.
Yihuan and I were having this conversation in the corner of the classroom so you could hear the kids in the background working on their games, some of them in groups and clearly having a good time. I asked Yihuan if any of these kids were developing their projects in a standout or surprising way. And he pointed to an 11 year old who was sitting by himself, apparently working on his game. Johan said something about the object of that game being to clear away gang members from a neighborhood that wants a better future. Could you introduce me to him? Yeah.
So do you want to show your game?
Sure. Thank you. Thank you. And and what's your name? Jonathan. How old are you? 11. And what what're you working on? I'm working on,
a game about my, environment, which is about our, neighborhood.
It's being cleared out. And when you say it's being cleared out, what do you mean? It's like
they're remodeling the neighborhood, and they're trying to, clear out all the people. And when it's done, they're gonna come back. The people try they're gonna come back, and you have to beware of the gangs.
So the plot of this game, the neighborhood that you live in so you're the player. The neighborhood that you live in is undergoing a major revitalization project. And so everybody living there has to be displaced for a period while they build the new neighborhood. But you've got a job in all of this. You've got to make sure that the gang members in the neighborhood either don't come back or come back with a better attitude so everyone can enjoy the rebuilt community. Jonathan's writing all of this himself. And so you hit the start button, then the first part of the game begins? Yes. Jonathan hits the start button, and we see the first part of the game with text on the screen. And so so what does the player do?
So he is, like, like, he builds up he builds the houses when everything is done. Like, he has this type of it's like a it's like he has, like, a superpower, but he actually knows how to, like, do the structure really fast,
like, build it. Okay. So you, the main player, are some kind of super home builder who can build houses at lightning speed your job. But in a dangerous environment that you have to navigate by making smart choices. Make the right decisions so you won't get hurt. Try your best. Okay? So with Jonathan watching, I played the game. And initially, I guess I was pretty good.
And so stage one, there is a gang in front of you, and you are scared, but it's your job to clear them out. And you have two options. It's either be fierce or be nice.
So be fierce or be nice. So okay. So you you have an option that you can click on, and you gotta click on what you think is the best decision, in that moment. Yes. What what happens if what happens if you click on, ask politely?
You'll be, moved on to the next stage because some of, some of the people in the neighborhood
like nice people, so they actually listen. So I get to move on to the next stage because I chose to be polite to the gang members. But curious about what would have happened had I chosen the other option, using force against the gang, I asked Jonathan to backtrack and show me. And it turns out the gang members were prepared to fight me over it. So my options on the screen were to either fight or call the police. So which one would you choose? Mhmm. Okay. So they refused to go, and then there's a possibility for a fight. So I might call the police. Is that the right answer?
The police come and arrest you for bothering the people of that gang for some apparent reason.
Is that what happens? Yes.
And if you choose fight back, they still really beat you and you die sucker.
Okay. So I'm laughing here because Jonathan's catching me a little bit off guard. I've got more to say about this in a minute. But yeah. This is like the wrong answer. But, yeah, the right answer is to ask politely. Mhmm. So after being polite with the gang members about the revitalization project, I can move on to the next stage where I've quickly built 26 nice houses for the people of this community, and where, it turns out, some other gang members aren't so happy with me over the displacement of the gang members from the last part of the game. And they are now furious with you. So I'm presented with two more choices. Do I try to use lethal force against these angry gangsters, or do I do what worked for me last time, which is talk to them? I might choose
talk. What what happens if you choose talk? You talk to them about moving and they listen to you. You were able to build the maximum of 46 houses.
So with that answer, I'm able to build the houses that need to be built. What what would have happened if I had, picked the other option, which was kill?
Kill. You kill four out of five of them. And before you can point your gun at at him, he shoots you 13 times in a skull. Woah.
So it's better we chose talk. Right? Yes. Yes. We go through the rest of the game, and the challenges get tougher and tougher. And it turns out I'm not so good at that. I I don't wanna fight anybody. What happens then? You did. Yeah. He's catching me off guard. And I'm laughing because, you know, I was into violent stuff too when I was that age, but in a campy, cinematic way, like an Indiana Jones way. Again, the assignment here was to create a game based on your home environment, Jonathan's home environment. So, he's working off that vibe where he lives, where it's definitely about making the right choices in the moment. And whether that threat of danger is real or perceived, and by all accounts it's real, this is the material he's come up with for his reality based assignment.
Mission complete. Stage four. You thought this was over? This is just the beginning. Hope you do well.
And he basically choked me up when he said that winning the game means having a nice place to live, a place that's so nice that it creates peace, and the gang members come back changed. And then the neighborhood is already modeled.
And since you've convinced them to come back, their whole personality is gonna change. Like, they're gonna be nicer. You're gonna have a better neighborhood. There's not gonna be no gunshots or anything. It's gonna be like a
nice
environment.
I love this, man. I really love this. Jonathan, appreciate you talking with me. So Jonathan introduces me to one of his classmates, Tyler. Hey, Tyler. I'm Ben. Hi. I'm Ben. On Tyler's computer screen was what looked like a downtown area, kinda like an aerial view. And in that area, you're responsible for driving a car safely. It's kind of a police chase game, kind of. You have to get your car to a specific destination without messing up, without doing anything that'll give police a reason to pull you over. It's a simple but highly graphical and suspenseful game and a lot like the ones I used to play when I was a kid, but with an updated look. How long did it take you to make this? Last week. Last week. This whole game. One thing that helped and clearly a sign of motivation from his end is that he worked on it not just in the computer lab, but at home too. He could access his work online, and he did during his personal time. And how old are you, by the way?
11.
One of the older kids in class was named Zay.
How how old are you? 16.
His game was kind of similar to Jonathan's, a game driven by making the right decisions in the moment. The plot involved getting caught up in a heist of sorts, breaking into a house, but only because the neighborhood gang coerced you violently.
Again, original material with instructions to base it on reality. Yeah. Yeah. Up here, you gotta actually think of a story that, you know, people can relate to or they can put themselves in their shoes. Like, make them feel like they're in the game literally. Because they gave us a topic. We have to base it off something that can, you know, happen in our neighborhood. You know? Our neighborhood's a little, like, kinda rough. So this kind of based off peer pressure. This boy or your character is, you know, trying to force him to do something he doesn't wanna do. But when he does it, you know, you gotta make good choices to try to get out of it.
How do you picture it ending up?
It's how you it's how you picture it ending up, really. It's not how I do. It's however you the choices can do for you.
When when you gonna be, finished with the game? I'll probably finish by the end of the day.
Yeah. I'm a finish by the end of the day, bro.
So with I mean, how long have you worked on this? Like, a week?
I started this morning.
I mean, being that efficient. Is this something you wanna keep doing? You know? Keep doing it.
It. Yeah. Like like even professionally? Or Yeah. When I first got here, I was kinda iffy. But since I've been here, you know, I've been straight.
I've been straight. So what did you learn here that you didn't know before? I learned how to code.
I learned how to actually make games, HTML, JavaScript. Most of them, I'm trying to start. So
yeah. And and so, I mean, could you see yourself
professionally building games? Yeah. I can. In the future, I could see I could see myself doing it, making a living for it. You know? Because it's fun. It's easy and it's fun, but it get hard sometimes. But, I mean, you gotta use your mind, use your brain. You know?
I walked back through the classroom, and a police officer was playing Tyler's police chase game. His name was Officer Lance of the Raleigh Police Department. He picks up the kids from the coding camp, and so he's in the classroom a lot.
They all perked up and got really excited when they found out they could make, you know, $6,070,000 dollars a year starting out or higher just as a basic game programmer as a right out of college. And the coding aspect of it doesn't have to be game specific. I mean, they could use coding for basically, all companies need people computer science people who are capable of coding. So learning these skills with something they have an interest in is certainly a helpful way to learn the skill. I asked Tyler if he knew where the idea for all of this came from. From mister Randu.
I haven't talked to him yet. I'm gonna talk to him in a little bit. Are there any questions you think I should ask him?
Why did he why did he come up with the idea?
I'll ask him that. Tyler was talking about Ronnell Robinson. He's the executive director of what's called the Give Back organization. He told me that he and a police officer were talking about new ideas for reaching at risk youths. Me and Chris Cole met in the parking lot on a rainy day and discussed
how can we help the kids and figure out a program that the kids will utilize and help them. So they asked me what do they like to do, and I'm like, all the kids do now is play video games. So we took it from that, and he went to NC State, talked to a couple people, instructors, and we put the program together. And it happened overnight. Didn't have any plans for it or have time to solicit for funds. It just happened, and we ran with it. And, a lot of the restaurants came together and helped us out a tremendous to allow the program to run, with NC State facilitating everything.
Is Games Over Gangs, is that the proper title for it? Yes. Games Over Games. Yes. And so what were some of the early experiences? Were there challenges in getting kids involved with it? You know, just kind of talk about the early moments.
There was no challenges, for us getting the kids involved. Officer Christo took his time and went door to door and knocked on super doors and asked the kids and the parents, do you feel your kid will want to participate in this? And all the kids were excited, like, oh, I get opportunity to play video games and make video games. I'm all in, to that nature. And it gives the kids the opportunity to get out of a stressful environment and get into an environment that is more educational and empowering for them. Just to see a different side of of the world, because if you look at it, NC State is, like, 8.1 miles away from Raleigh North. Mhmm. And none of the kids have ever been on a college campus.
Well, you know, the the environment, you you mentioned the environment that they face every day at home. Could could you kind of describe that, for people who might not know?
You have a stress environment where you have a lot of drug activity, gangs, street violence that the kids see on an everyday basis. They did a scenario inside of the workshop when the kids were in camp, and they said describe something that is true or false. And one kid described, I've tested dead body. Is that true or false? For him, that was reality. He's seen and tested dead body. Wow. For most kids, only time they ever see a dead body is at a funeral. Yeah. But to see one inside the street or in a creek somewhere and visually see that, this is what these kids go through on a daily basis.
Sergeant James Krzyszkowiak of the Raleigh PD is the guy that Robinson was talking about when he said the nickname, Krzyszko. I got him on the phone along with another foundational member of Games Over Gangs, patrol officer Megan Gay. Not present was Shane Peekich, a third partner there from the beginning.
Priscowiak pointed out how there are already plenty of outreach efforts to kids in rough or low income neighborhoods. You know, traditionally in the past, it was some type of sporting event. Can we get them involved in basketball? Can we get them involved in baseball? But we really wanted and and Meghan and Shane really wanted to go and think outside the box and come at them from a different direction with something that's more sustainable to provide them with a lifeline,
something that they can follow-up on that can elevate them out of their current situation. Here's officer Gay. It was actually from the minute we started going out and talking about it, there was a lot of excitement in the kids. A lot of them kinda grown up with older siblings and video games and, you know, they're fairly easy to get your hands on these days. So there was a whole lot of excitement from the minute we started this project. You know, it wasn't just another sports thing or something like that. This was actually something that they played, and, you know, being able to design them was a very interesting concept.
Was there much interest from, from from girls in the neighborhood? When I was in the class, it was mostly, it was mostly boys. Actually, it was all boys. Yes. We had one, one girl that was interested, but when she realized she was the only one, she decided that she was gonna take a pass on the class. Mhmm. But we have been approached by, another organization that wanted to focus on females, encoding, and I believe,
Citrix was also interested in that too. Citrix is one of the global software companies with a big office in Raleigh.
Because Citrix came in and they gave the kid they invited the kids that for a tour of their downtown campus, gave them lunch. Mhmm. And, but I know there's a big push around the country for to put emails into coding Mhmm. Specifically. So, yes, that's been a topic that has come up. And so that's rolled into a mindset or brainstorming exercise
of other modern or atypical ways to reach out to youths. And on the same note, that tour of the Citrix office, that was meant to show these kids that coding is more than just making video games, that you can get a sweet office job and a good salary by pursuing your knowledge of coding or programming or development, which subsequently is a growing part of public education now. Here's Trey, who's 13. He was in the NC State classroom working on a game where the object is to get home safely without being accosted, which he said is real life for him and also serves as an analogy for navigating other kinds of challenges in life. Did did you have any experience writing code before?
Yeah. I did a lot in school in fifth grade and sixth. So yeah. So coding in fifth grade, like, what what were you doing at that time? At that time, that's when I was, like, a regular kid, and I wanted to learn something else because I wanted to be, like, an engineer in computer science. So yeah.
That's what I wanted to do. Here's Nick Lytle, who teaches coding alongside Yihuan in the classroom. And he said it's also, for these kids, hugely therapeutic
and expressive. Many of the projects you've seen already kind of, like, relate to, you know, trying to get out of that environment, higher aspirations of getting to a better neighborhood, having a better life. And, nearly all the stories kind of have that theme. It's actually pretty interesting to kind of watch them kind of use the medium of games as an artistic expression. And I guess the hope the the biggest hope and intent was, a, to just give them a space where, you know, eight hours a day, they're not in that environment. Then the secondary goal was to, if they're gonna be in a space, try to give them some technical skills that maybe they can take out of it. And I think in both fronts, we've seen and found a lot of success. Right? And I guess we hope that from kind of the stuff that we've learned and what they've responded to, what they've liked, that we can kind of potentially do similar outreaches and figure out other opportunities for expansions. So doing both boys and girls, doing maybe engineering focused rather than just computer science focused camps that kinda give opportunities that may not be available to, you know, the whole population.
We'll go back to Zay for the final word.
If more kids had the opportunity to do this, I mean, they'd probably get more and more out the hood and try to get them into, like, a better place, like, houses and everything. You know? Because the more money they get it's like if we all go to college, we're gonna get more money and then take our families with us. So that's gonna take them out of that position and make more people wanna do it to get out of that position too.
This class was six weeks long, but that doesn't mean it just stopped at the end, like the kids are moving on and forgetting everything they've learned. The coordinators are working on follow ups. And just a couple weeks ago, the kids had a ceremony attended by people from big software companies to check out what these kids made. And with some of the money that Ronald Robinson and collaborators raised during the class from donations, they bought each of these kids their own computers. Kano PCs, which are geared toward coding, so they can keep it going. Some of the people involved with this initiative also told me that the games these kids made during the coding class will be available online, so I'll tweet that link when I get it. Couple other developers I wanna give a shout out to, Roger Hicks and Matt White, who created the free Pulse Boy software, which I use to compose the old school video game music you heard near the start of this episode, and again right now. Thank you for listening. I'll have links to material from this episode about Games Over Gangs in the show notes at municipalequation.libsyn.com. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please let us know why in a friendly review on iTunes. That keeps us motivated, as do your emails and shared tweets. You can reach me at bbrown@nclm.org. And on Twitter, the handle is at muni equation. That's at m u n I equation. Thanks so much. Your help means a lot. Municipal Equation is a biweekly podcast from the North Carolina League of Municipalities online at nclm.0rg. On a personal note, I'd like to dedicate this episode to Scott Murphy. I hope you're well. I'll talk to you next time. This has Ben Brown. Right. So it is 08/06/2018, 09:41AM. We're about to hear from an instructor for the camp this time around in 2018.
So, my name is David Warren, and I was an instructor for the camp this summer. In terms of, like, proficiency with computers and stuff, they showed a very wide range of ability. We were seeing people between the age of, like, 11 to, I think, 15 was our oldest. A lot of them seemed like they were there because they were curious about the camp more than anything else. They were looking for some place to spend the summer, something to do. But we were able to keep things interesting, and they were actually choosing to come and learn about stuff. We were just trying to teach the students how to control something on the screen and make that thing on the screen a
extension of a player. Raleigh Police Department, did they have a role in this too?
Yes. They did. We trained them beforehand as mentors. And so they were able to come in and help the students with a lot of the questions that they had throughout the camp. They actually did a great job of it, and we were pretty proud of how they were interacting with the students and the positive experiences that they were having with the students as well. There were a lot of great interactions I was able to see and record, and I think that we might be able to, write a paper or try and say something about how this camp really has benefited the interaction between the students and the police officers and and the relationships that it's developed.
There might even be something I just didn't know to ask about that came up this time around that was, you know, surprising or memorable or anything like that. Oh my gosh. Every interaction with the students was surprising and memorable.
I bet. I think that one of the most interesting aspects and the most interesting thing that I saw was the way that the students benchmark themselves, not in terms of personal growth, but in terms of ability against each other. And that they use each other as a benchmark for success or for failure on particular assignments and So so sort of like healthy competition within the students in the class? Or Absolutely. I think we could have done a lot more with garnering that.
