The idea is fairly simple; have participants go on an online treasure hunt to find the “key to adult hood” in preparation for graduation. The theme of the project is the transition from the world of education to the world adulthood. The challenges of finding the final video represent the changes of finding the way through college to adulthood. In the first video the “ghost of students past” challenge current students to go on a quest. Are intention is to immerse participants through several different media in the quest. We use blogs, digital story videos on YouTube and Facebook, and twitter post to lead the participant though the immersion process.
The final video turned out a little different from what I originally intended. My original idea was to focus primarily on the message of finding the ‘treasure’ or ‘key’ at the end of the text. The only clips that remain of this idea are the finding the treasure scenes from Fools Gold. Lauren and I discussed the idea of using quotes from famous movies about growing up that would go with our theme. I rented Breakfast Club and Farris Bowler’s day off to find quotes. The video started to shape in to a random collection of quotes about adulthood and life in general, both funny and serious. Lauren suggested the section from Dead Poets’ Society about the ghost of students past. This clip was used to help continue the narrative of ghost of students which we stated in the opening video Lauren created.
Jane McGonigal has done a lot of work in the field of Alternative Realities, Quest, and Game Theory which has been a part of our conception for this project. Her project I love Bees was what gave us the original idea for the quest theme of puzzles leading to something to find. In this video http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2008/mcgonigal (about 1/4 time spot) she discusses games as “interacting with an interactive system.” Which is one of the core ideas of our project, engaging participates with an interactive system of puzzles. She talks about legends of ancient times in which people use game to combat hunger because they are interactive. In her article: http://danhon.com/2008/03/11/sxsw-2008-jane-mcgonigal-keynote/ she talks about how the mind searches for new information to be happy. In the same video (about the same time spot) she says that “games can be a constructive response to a social problem,” I am not saying that our project is anything that grand, but it does revolve around a major issue for all college students, leaving college and joining the real world. Are goal is to engage students in an interactive experience which addresses this issue of their life in a humorous and challenging manner.
Link to the starting video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7QCe45g0x0
