Actual Proposal for Final Project

xxxxWe would like to deal with the issue of public harassment of young women, specifically on the street. Our goal is to create a game in which the player is a female college student in New York City trying to get to class. On her way, she will be whistled at, catcalled, and generally accosted by various guys on the street. She will be presented with various options of coping with each incident, with different outcomes. A player wins the game if the student arrives safely at her class; if she does not make it to class as a result of one of the outcomes of her coping strategies, the player loses.

xxxx We hope to achieve a number of things by creating this game. First, we would like to draw awareness to the prevalence of this kind of harassment. Many players would be able to experience the difficulties of a social role that they do not play in real life, and many of the coping strategies offered would be those employed by real women in real life. Male players would have an opportunity to walk a mile, so to speak, in a young woman's shoes. We hope to highlight what a different experience simply walking down the street can be for many women than it is for many men.

xxxx We hope that the game would be equally valuable to players who do experience this kind of harassment in their everyday lives. While this is a serious issue, we would also hope to make fun of the practice of street harassment even as we raise awareness about it. Humor can be a great entry way into an issue that people are uncomfortable with. Some of the coping strategies offered would reach into the greatly socially inappropriate or absurd. A player could just as easily have the student castrate a harasser or show him her breasts as he or she could have the student confront him verbally or simply walk away. This could give some female players a sense of empowerment they do not feel on the street as well as allowing them to respond in ways that they would not dare to in real life. At the same time, we would like to highlight the diversity of experiences on the street, so in the game incidents would range from annoying, to comic or absurd, to frightening, just as they are on the actual street. Some of the outcomes could be terribly violent, creating the same kind of uncertainty that exists on the street.

xxxx An interesting aspect of this project is its participatory nature: the audience is an integral part of the performance. Schechner describes a performance quadrilogue, consisting of sourcers, producers, performers, and partakers. In the street game, each game player would be acting both as a partaker and a performer. Through their participation, they would alter the performance itself, because each game as played by individual players would be different.

xxxx The game will offer visitors the opportunity to go out into the world and face these different men and different situations. They will begin their trip to class and be stopped by a man. His dialogue will either appear as text only, or be accompanied by real audio. He will make a comment at the player. The player will then be given choices about how they want to respond. For example:

A)Ignore him and keep walking.

B)Stop for a moment and look at him and keep walking

C)Stop and talk to him

D)Shoot him

Their selection will be a link which will take them on to the next screen. The game continues in this manner until the player either wins or loses. The options for responses will grow more violent as the game goes on. The responses that are given will be realistic, and as in life, somewhat random. Each cat-caller may respond differently to the same action.

xxxx The page will be mostly links. It is like a choose your own adventure game. The links will cross over into each other, i.e.: you may go from cat-caller 1 to 4 to 2 or cat-caller 1 to 5 to 4. We’re not sure how many options we will end up with. Hopefully enough to offer variety of play. There will be images, either real or cartoon. We will not be using video on the site. If we use audio we can either use recorded voices by actors, or by real cat-callers. We plan to do research by sending actresses out on the street ( safely, and with people to protect them should things start to get out of control), while doing that research we may use body mics to pick up the sound. We could then transfer that and put it on the Internet, if it is clear enough.

xxxx For this project we have actors, ourselves as well as friends and classmates. We have the space on out NYU accounts, as well as space on AngelFire. We have the ability to create the site, though it will require a lot of specific planning before the build. We would need access to a wireless microphone if we decide to record our street research. If we use animation we would need an animator/cartoonist. Jay will provide an original sound track to the game.