Game Re-creates Lost Oakland Neighborhood

Peter Brantley
August 12, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

My hat's off to the release of a superb project out of the UC Berkeley Journalism School that re-creates a "lost" and once vibrant neighborhood of Oakland, 7th Street:

There's much more to be done -- developing a curriculum so grade school students can use the game to learn about 7th Street and the blues and jazz scene (we got a small grant to help with this); installing some computers we're buying for the West Oakland Senior Center and the West Oakland Library so folks there can access and play the game; getting older folks and young kids to play the game together as an experiment in cross-generational learning; building out the next phase of the game, in which the player will be challenged to organize the community to stop the projects that destroyed 7th Street, such as BART, the post office, the freeway and the public housing projects; and filling in more of the current game world by adding more characters and places the player can interact with.

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