Arisean and Me: How Gaming Sparks Creativity

When we are young, our life is about repetition and experimentation. Much of our time is spent finding our limits and identifying what seems to make us happy. Because of this, it’s very important to have someone to look up to. Our role models can even be fictional, and as gaming becomes the media of choice for more and more, those role models can shape and inspire kids of the Millenial 

generation.

Yesterday I had the privilege of spending my first afternoon as a volunteer tutor at the Wordplay Creative Writing Center in downtown Cincinnati. I arrived just upon opening, and Arisean, my student for the afternoon, was there too. It was also his first day at the center, so we were both able to learn the flow of the day, ground rules, and about each other together. He shared with me his two biggest passions: math and Sonic the Hedgehog.

Since he was a new student, he was able to decorate his personal binder with a front panel insert. Of course, he started by drawing Sonic and the seven Chaos Emeralds. While he worked, he began describing to me all about the recent history of the Sonic games, along with his ideas for Sonic’s long lost brother, Shadow. He told me all about his powers, his super form, and that he was black with green stripes. It was so heart-warming to see Arisean constructing his own member of an existing fictional family. It seemed that Wordplay was going to be just the right place for him.

After some homework and a reading activity, Arisean took some blank paper and began to write on one of the many typewriters at Wordplay. I joined him on another typewriter close by, as I hadn’t used a manual one in probably 15 years. He started to write about how he liked Wordplay and me, and all about other details of his first day’s experience. When I was getting ready to leave for the day, I let the organizer know about his experience and his ideas about Zero the Hedgehog. She was absolutely thrilled, and Arisean joined some of the other children in the Creative Writing Group. In that group, instead of giving kids a specific writing activity to focus on, they allow creative kids with ideas to write drafts of their own stories.

Would an analytical kid like Arisean ever have been interested in creative writing if it were for his experience with the Sonic franchise? With so many schools cutting everything but the most basic activities required due to budget constraints, it isn’t surprising to me that children would imagine their own additions to their favorite games. With all of the bad press that gaming seems to bear in mainstream media it’s nice to interact with real gamers; kids and adults who use these gaming IPs as springboards for creative thinking and art production. I believe in the huge impact of Wordplay’s program on children in inner city Cincinnati, and I look forward to working more with Arisean, other students, and in the soon to start WordUp program for high school freshmen and sophomores who need a tutor, mentor, and friend.

Gamers United!

Cavin “Pox” DeJordy

Wordplay Creative Writing Center: http://wordplaycincy.org/

Breaking the Fifth Wall

This post is going to be very personal. I think it’s important to express my experience and views as openly as possible so that my audience can know the real me.

 My name is Cavin DeJordy, and I am a gamer. My life has been a tumultuous one, to say the least. I have lived from Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to Groton, Connecticut, and eight other locations all around the United States. I have been married, divorced, in the military, worked in an office, a warehouse, at a restaurant, in retail, and am well on my way to a business degree in Entrepreneurship from the University of Cincinnati. I have spent countless hours sitting in hobby stores, running or playing in games, and questioning the shop's owners, employees, and customers. Every day I try to make time to learn about a new game, or dig deeper in to a complex one. I have lived in many worlds, from MMO, to Virtual World, to only those which exist in my mind and the minds of my Players and Game Masters. I have done all this with one singular purpose: to know the experience of as diverse a swath of humanity as I possibly can so I can, in turn, produce and direct compelling entertainment experiences and design the systems needed to support those experiences.

From all this travel, networking, inquiry, and analysis I have determined some universal truth. We all share a plane of existence, but not two of us live in the same world. We can all use our senses to reach out and experience our shared space, but our observation of those spaces is shaped by our past experiences, which not even the most identical of us share completely. Once I came to this realization, my whole life changed.

When I was growing up, I wanted everyone to be like me. As a kid who enjoyed reading encyclopedias, constructing things out of building toys, doing statistical analysis, mastering web research, and crafting role-playing modules, that wasn’t necessarily a realistic expectation. Once I learned to accept and study other people instead of trying to convert them, I have been a much happier and open-minded person.

To me, creativity has no bounds. I analyze multimedia games, board games, RPGs, collectible games, and other forms of art with an open, inquisitive mind. My goal is to revolutionize the way we all play, compete, and collaborate, and I will participate in any playtest, panel, discussion, or observation thrown my way. The Fifth Wall, in my opinion, is the wall that separates creative people from each other, and I am to provide the wrecking ball that opens a floodgate of art on to the status quo of the gaming community at large.

So here I stand, at the table of the Internet, ready to make a business out of supporting creativity, performance, and community interaction. In future posts I’ll be talking about Stronghold, my embryonic business, and my experiences with real life and online gaming communities. I look forward to feedback and collaboration in the future with some of the more established bloggers and Internet personalities. Also, if you live in the Cincinnati area and are interested in forming or allowing me to join your semi-monthly or monthly gaming group, be sure to contact me. If you would like to share your own story, please respond to this post and I will not hesitate to break the ice.

Gamers United!

Cavin “Pox” DeJordy