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| New York's WNET-TV Created Hit Video Game |
Once across the Ohio River, they quickly learn life in the North -- where people are "free" -- can be treacherous. There is danger and difficulty facing the young girl on the road to freedom. Along the way, the players cross paths with abolitionists and slave owners. They make decisions that affect how the flight to freedom ends. Players learn how people’s choices – from small, everyday acts of resistance to action that sought an end to slavery – changed our nation for the better. Basically, it's a video game about slavery and the abolitionist movement. Kirk Hamilton, who reviewed Lucy's flight on gamer guide Kotaku.com earlier this week, was impressed and said the game was engaging and actually quite good:
"After arriving in Ohio, I learned that I was anything but safe. Act three begins a year later, in 1849, and while Ohio was a free state, slaves were still deemed the legal property of their owners, so 'Slave Catchers' would come across the border looking to catch escaped slaves and return them for a bounty. A whole new raft of troubles, danger, and agonizing choices awaited Lucy. What will happen to her? Only one way to find out.
I am impressed with Mission U.S., both for what it's doing and for how it's doing it.It's a well-made game, and it treats its characters and its players with respect. It manages to convey some important aspects about the experience of slavery in a way that is appropriate for kids (I haven't seen anyone get beaten or hanged or heard the n-word) but can be appreciated by adults as well."Click here to get a free download of the game, and also to read more about its production by Channel 13, the PBS affiliate in New York City. The trailer is here:
The Freedom Center turned out to be a multi-million dollar boondoggle. It is a museum that nobody wants to go to. It has no energy or creativity. The crew in New York did more with less and put the Underground Railroad on the map. All we hear is a giant sucking sound from the boondoggle on the Cincinnati riverfront.
ReplyDeleteIf Mike Brown ran the Freedom Center we'd all be broker and he'd be richer.
ReplyDeleteCoach John Madden can do release a video game about running and dodging tacklers on the Underground Railroad. That would be a hit. He would probably make it in Oakland not Cincinnati.
DeleteDid Rick Hines write this blog post?
ReplyDeleteRidiculing an organization in Cincinnati because someone did something in a different place sounds like a story meant more for Hines' steaming pile of balderdash.
Thanks for your thoughts on Mission US. In fact, Nikki M. Taylor, Associate Professor of History at the University of Cincinnati and historian at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, is one of our advisors for “Flight to Freedom” (more info here - http://bit.ly/AflyO2). Also, local public television station CET has been an excellent outreach partner on the project, providing professional development to Cincinnati-area educators on integrating the game into their classrooms (http://www.cetconnect.org/education/mission-us). One of those PD workshops was hosted by the Freedom Center in November 2011.
ReplyDeleteNice to see a minor Cincinnati fingerprint from Nikki as an "advisor." But you have not refuted the fact that the Freedom Center has been a major disappointment. Millions spent and hardly anything innovative in return for the investment. What a point of pride it would be to say the Flight to Freedom was a project of the Freedom Center. The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center was supposed to be "national" in scope. Your interactive game is national. Right now, the museum is a dud that hopefully can find a role sometime in the future. You are creative. They are floundering.
DeleteThe Freedom Center hosted a "PD workshop" last November? Cincinnati taxpayers built a $100 milliion building to host a workshop about an out-of-town project on the Underground Railroad. Sorry, you could have done it at the library, Xavier, University of Cincinnati, Museum Center, Taft or Aronoff, a school auditorium. The Freedom Center soaked up money that could have been used to preserve Cincinnati and Ohio history.
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