Games+Learning+Society

Our conceptual model of Minority Brogrammer Simulator is based on empathy and awareness. Uncovering the biases that flow within the workplace in policy and in individual social interaction should be the starting for creating a respectfull and all inclusive culture. 

 

We recognize that the user's conceptual model may be different from our own. To some players, and even to you our target audience for this proposal, Minority Brogrammer Simulator simplifies (or oversimplifies) a significant workplace and societial issue. The emotional effect of the game, no matter how admirable and sincere, simply won't work as well as we would expect, because it is a game.

 

In other words, the very design of Minority Brogrammer Simulator is as much an affordance as it is a constraint.

No matter how well designed our game is, it may not have the same impact on everyone. 

 

Although this aspect of the trainging is outside the scope of our proposal, we suggested that in addition to the game, diversity officers have a metadiscourse on the diversity training workshops themselves. Explore the feelings, experiences, and expectations of the employees. How do they veiw these workshops? Another hoop to jump through? Something that takes up too much time?

 

The discussion can then turn to the participants themselves by asking them to reflect on their own interaction with racism and microagressions and their beliefs about race and social justice in the United States. In these sessions, participants may uncover their own conservative biases, expose the limitations of well-meaning liberalism, and how even philosophy can perpetuate biases. In addition, discussions can show that these unintended biases can embed themselves in their projects, their interaction with other people, the policies they follow/create, official and unofficial, spoken and unspoken.