Yesterday in the Big Apple, socially-aware teens held the first-ever NYC Youth Media & Technology Festival. The event spotlighted the work of teenagers who create video games and other digital media projects in order to advance social causes.
Organizers expected about 100 attendees for the Festival. The gathering was intended to produce a citywide dialogue about the role of new media and technology in teens' lives and how it can be utilized to promotes issues kids care about.
A group of young designers affiliated with the New York Public Library were scheduled to showcase their designs and conceptualizations for serious video games about subjects like celebrity drug use, media consolidation and genocide.
Meanwhile, teens from the Global Kids Virtual Video Project premiered an animated short film about child sex trafficking in the United States. Members of MOUSE discussed their efforts to advance technology in New York City public schools by developing open source labs, advocating for the One Laptop Per Child campaign and other efforts.
The invitation-only event was held at the Parsons The New School for Design.
-Doug Buffone, Entertainment Consumers Association intern
Comments
Re: In NYC, Teens Game Their Way to a Better World
Also don't forget that even in Anime and Manga, they do go into allot of themes of social issues and problems.
Not all are about sex and sexuality and how rape is horrible and all those sort of themes.
Even some Anime and Manga and Dating Simulation games have delved into social issues like Cancer (Amusement Park for example) and Amnesia (Rumbling Hearts for example).
With Autism, there is the Manga called With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child (that is the actural name) and there are allot of other social issues that do rise up in that Manga like School Bullying, Workplace Bullying, Domestic Violence, Raising Children while being a single parent, how people who are a bit different are often shunned from society because other people can't understand them.
So many social issues have been in many Japanese Anime, Manga and Dating Sims that it is hard to think why there is so many people in this world who just don't understand Anime, Manga or Japanese Dating Sim games.
Re: In NYC, Teens Game Their Way to a Better World
And so far in Japan, many adult game designers have been doing those very same issues in their games for well over 20 years.
Re: In NYC, Teens Game Their Way to a Better World
So... what was that bullshit from the Eagle Forum about again? Video game being the cause of all social ills?
Good show, but to them, it won't matter. If they can pretend it never happened, there's little to convince them otherwise. And surely, to them, the bad outweighs the good.
Re: In NYC, Teens Game Their Way to a Better World
I could say the same thing with Jack Thompson (note: John Bruce Thompson from the USA. To anyone in the Baby Boomer Generation I am NOT talking about the other Jack Thompson who is a well respected Australian TV person) , Senator Yee, Keith Vass, Michael Atkinson, a few certain members of the USA congress, the entire Thiland Government, a fair few number of politicians in Germany, all those people who lost their kids in school shootings and still blame Violent Videogames for their kids death, the mothers and fathers who blame videogames for their kids suicide.
To be honest, there is nothing you can do for those who always blame Videogames for everything that they don't understand.
All we can do is to be thankful that we as individuals know better.
Re: In NYC, Teens Game Their Way to a Better World
"animated short film about child sex trafficking"? Sounds fun.
Re: In NYC, Teens Game Their Way to a Better World
Sounds allot like a Japanese Hentai film that has been around for a long long time.
And remember, Hentai is the adult name for Anime and Manga for adults only, so in a way they also try to talk about society issues. However the detail they go into often offends other people.
I don't think that a school could ever really do a film that porperly goes into that sort of theme without offending people.
Re: In NYC, Teens Game Their Way to a Better World
Well, at least no one tried to pull city code violations to shut it down it seems.
Re: In NYC, Teens Game Their Way to a Better World
I feel the same about this too, I sure hope no politician wants to use this as a political vote grabber and want to pull this exhibition down.
Because it is important for people to do things like this, even though not many people would ever understand the issues they are going into.
Re: In NYC, Teens Game Their Way to a Better World
I know, we can call it "Getting Mirched" :D