Ypulse Interview: Alice Taylor, 'Smokescreen'
Posted by meredith on 09-29-2009A couple months back we profiled the alternate reality game Smokescreen, launched by British public-service broadcasting network Channel 4 to educate UK teens about online privacy.
Now that the game has officially launched, we followed up with one of the creative forces behind Smokescreen: Alice Taylor, Commissioning Editor of Education for Channel 4, to find out more about how the game went over with teens, what went into this innovation in edutainment and what comes next!
Ypulse: What inspired Smokescreen? How did that translate into the design and content of the alternate reality game and its specific missions?
Alice Taylor: I'm a resident of the UK, which is the most government-surveilled country on the planet. As such, three things are on my radar a lot: Big Brother (Orwell wrote the wonderful 1984 whilst employed by a British broadcaster), CCTV cameras (they're everywhere) and the UK's ID card debacle: the government owning and (mis)managing a megadatabase of citizens' intimate data is a thought that keeps me awake at night in a very cold sweat!
Add to this privacy nightmare the everyday stuff that happens online: data trails, info-stalking, uploading the wrong photo: we're constantly hearing stories of how someone's online profile has cost them a job/spouse/reputation.
Our target audience here at Channel 4 Education is UK teens aged 14-19, and it's pretty safe to say that every single one of them has a life online somehow, and is leaving digital trails as we speak. We felt it was time to start addressing this broad topic with the sort of material that teens might actually want to engage with. With that in mind, we approached Six to Start and asked them to create us a game about privacy and online security, with a sense of Orwell's legacy. The result is the brilliance of Adrian Hon (the game's designer) and his talented team.
YP: The game covers a range of scenarios where the ethical choice involves a lot more critical thought than the "moral panics" the media tends to focus on (i.e, "sexting" ). How did your research with teens factor into those inclusions? Can you describe an example of a mission and describe the creative process behind it?"
[Ed. Note: Alice turned this question over to the game's designer] Adrian Hon: Our research showed that teens were well aware of the dangers of the internet; in fact, a group in North London we spoke to actually said, very sarcastically, "Oh, so you're making a game about avoiding pedophiles?" The point is that teens are just completely turned off by these overblown moral panics – they hear about stalkers and pedophiles so often that they just don't believe in them any more; they've totally lost confidence in official warnings.
This means that we've had to approach online privacy issues very obliquely. For example, in mission 3, we explore the idea of online stalking – but not with some crazed psycho killer or an adult stalking a young girl. Instead, we have Shane, a particularly obnoxious (but very funny) guy who is enlisting your help to chat up a girl he likes. At the start, you assume that they're classmates, and so it seems fine to look up her details on Facebook – after all, who hasn't done that to someone they like? But as the game goes along, it becomes clear that she's actually annoyed with his attention and eventually tells him to get lost.
She wasn't at risk of being kidnapped or killed or anything like that – she was just being annoyed by some creep in a club, which is a much more likely scenario than anything violent. We don't have a clear moral that says "Don't post information online!" – we simply make people realize that when you do have a detailed and real-time online profile, you may have to deal with some creeps; and on the other side, that it's not cool to take online stalking (that we all do a tiny bit of!) too far.
YP: How did you go about getting teen input on the game as it was being developed?
AT: Six to Start approached a number of schools as development partners, whereby a set group of teens would play and feedback at points during the development. There was also a "closed beta" period where a select group was allowed a deeper rummage through the mostly-finished game. Six To Start also have their own network of testers, from their Perplex City and We Tell Stories days.
YP: What has the initial response to Smokescreen been like? How are teens discovering Smokescreen on their own? Has Smokescreen partnered with any schools or other organizations?
AT: It's very early days of course, but the response has been fantastic so far: we were expecting the game to launch quietly, grow over its 8-week "live" run, and then clock up the visits and reactions once it's a live package. We're only half way in, but already there's been a ton of attention , from press columns and reviews (Casual Gameplay, Escapist Magazine), to tweets and visitors: it's benchmarking well above Google's average for online games already.
We'll know a lot more once the full game's live and available to play from start to finish, and we'll be talking numbers and feedback then, but it's pretty clear that this topic is of huge interest to a lot of people and that the format's very well received.
YP: Has there been discussion around how parents, educators or other youth workers can use Smokescreen or another complementary site? What, if any, decisions have been made on that front?
AT: At the moment, the game is targeted directly at teens, as a leisure experience (that just happens to be educational). When we're showing it to teens or promoting it to them, we don't mention the education. We don't want to risk turn-off before they've tried it! We'd rather they played it and discussed it and discovered it naturally.
But, we have a 5 year license to the game, and once it's had its run, we'll definitely repackage it for use within the classroom or by parents. We'll be producing extra resources to help teachers and other interested parties create lesson plans and the like.
YP: Can you describe the marketing plan? How will teens hear about Smokescreen?
AT: Yep: "Talk to bloggers, use our own networks". As I mentioned earlier, Six to Start have their address book of people, as do we in terms of PR. We'll have banners and a trailer on www.channel4.com and on the TV for a few slots later on in the live run, but so far the cover has been purely by word of mouth and press release.
YP: Are there any international partners or plans to have it go beyond the UK?
AT: Not at the moment. Channel 4′s educational budget is spent on UK independent production companies, and targeting UK-based 14-19 year olds with "soft" education. As such, it's the number of UK teens that we reach, and how well they react to the material, that really counts for us. As all our projects are internet native we always get a halo of non-UK visitors too, but we count and sift and work out (usually quite a bit later) what the UK's response is.
However, Channel 4 develops with independents, taking a license to the final work rather than owning it. As such, Six To Start have the right to exploit the game internationally after our exclusive license period – or possibly even during, with our agreement, if it were to come up. Such a thing might be less likely (than, say, TV exploitation) with an internet-native idea though as it's global from day one, but you never know. Perhaps if US schools wanted a version for internal use, that sort of thing, that's definitely something Six to Start could explore.
Categorized under: Education
