Happy birthday to us!
VGWB turns 9 years old, Antura Erasmus+ in France, Hexplorando Demo
Video Games Without Borders turns 9 years old!
It was February 2015 when our association was founded to study, develop and promote videogames for positive social impact. It has been an amazing journey so far and we are convinced that the future will be even better!
If you want to read our story: 👉🏼 https://vgwb.org/about/
▶️ Antura workshop in France
In January the Antura Erasmus+ project started development with a 3 days workshop in Angers, France. ( 👉🏼 read here about the kickoff meeting last December in Cologne)
Since we are in a collaborative research project to create an application to facilitate immigrant kids to understand of the culture and social codes of a host country, while acquiring basic knowledge of the language, we need first to understand the real needs and situations of the kids, their parents and the teachers / educators dealing with them.
With three researchers (German, Italian, French) and translators, we went to meet parents, pupils, teachers, school mediators and educators in various schools in Maine-et-Loire. Guided by questionnaires and activities we prepared and translated, we held extensive discussions with everyone involved and we identified three particular topics to be worked on as a priority:
understanding the school and how it works
understanding the city and how it works
knowing the essential elements of French history and geography
We also gathered information about the video-games kids are used to play and on what devices, the attitude of parents about video games and their daily life in a foreign town and country.
We saw how educators are working, the ways they support allophone pupils, the structures and the resources.
These meetings and exchanges helped to forge valuable links between researchers-teachers-students-parents-mediators/educators.
Parents were particularly appreciative of these extended exchanges. They were able to come back at length and confidently explain their difficulties in understanding the social codes, the implicit and invisible aspects of the school system, and expressed their need to know more about the geography and history of France. The children enjoyed working alongside their parents.
Exchanges took place in different languages and everyone was able to express themselves by switching from one language to another. Cristiana, an Italian-speaking Romanian mother, particularly appreciated the time she spent talking to Stefano in Italian, without the need for a translator.
The translators, mediators and educators also appreciated this cooperative effort, and are delighted to be involved in the three years of the project.
Now the same assessments will be carried out in Poznam (Poland) and we’ll merge the outcome as starting point for the real game design phase in March, to be play-tested with these kids and parents this summer.
We’ll keep you informed with this newsletter and you are free to follow the opensource development at 👉🏼 https://github.com/vgwb/Antura/
▶️ Hexplorando
The development of Hexplorando is progressing well and we have recently completed the first demo including both game modes:
In the Puzzle Mode you can discover the landscape and cultural heritage of Spain: each region is a puzzle that brings art, territory, and history to life
The heritage elements can be used in the limitless Sandbox Mode, with procedural quests to help you unleash your creativity
Be sure to sign up to our Discord server if you want to try the Demo!
Heplorando will be released on Steam in the coming months: be sure to add it to your Wishlist! 👉🏼 https://store.steampowered.com/app/2736590/hexplorando/
🕺Join our community!
If you want to stay in contact with people like us or participate in the design or development of social impact games, test new projects, help translations or just find people who promotes these kind of projects, you are invited to our Discord community server: 👉🏼 https://discord.gg/GYwkaZt
We just require your real name (you can set it just for this server, you know) and a minimal introduction of yourself.
If you are reading this newsletter online, you are invited to subscribe, like, comment and share it. We would like to be in touch with all the international community of people interested in social impact games.