Project Introduction
The Syrian Refugee Simulation was an interactive simulation designed to inform the people who went to Festival Del Sol about the hardships that Syrian refugees go through everyday. Players started in Syria where they would soon be taken over by ISIS and smuggled into Turkey. After that its up to them to travel country to country until they find the refuge they seek. Along the way they might find themselves bankrupt, dead, or stuck waiting to be accepted into a country. It was a long grueling process putting this all together and required lots of revision and students that were creative and hardworking but in the end watching people go through the simulation as their character and watching them be so enthusiastic made it all worth it.
How we decided to make a simulation
Which product to be created for this project started as a decision between a museum like exhibition and a play. The problem with this was that one class felt very strongly about putting on a show and the other class felt very strongly about presenting our research as a formal exhibition. Because of this problem, a group of students and our teacher, Dr. P, got together during lunch one day and came up with a compromise. We would create a simulation where we could show all our work in an informative way while still having that fun theatrical (for lack of a better word) side they wanted from the play.
The role of the lead designers
As one of the four lead designers, I'm going to have to agree with my peer, Dany Francis (another lead designer), that without the four of us, this simulation would have been a complete disaster. Our job throughout the entire process of creating the simulation was to make sure everything was accurate and worked. We had to create a a seamless flow for people to follow without sacrificing the realism for what these refugees are actually going through. We also had to make sure everything worked geographically as well! It was a lot of work but being he control freak I am it was a great role for me to have.
PLAYTEST one
I didn't have much hope for this first practice simulation. It was very thrown together and all we had were the groups and their research. We had no props, no costumes, no physical stations and no idea what the groups were going to say, we didn't even have a map of where each station was going to go! But we threw it all together as we went along and it ended up going way better than I had expected. Our refugees and everyone in the groups were all in character, people were running around trying to get accepted and it was actually a pretty fun time.
Playtest two
The second time around was definitely better but not very different from the first playtest. This time we had cardboard props and started to implement money into our simulation. All of the groups had more research done and were definitely more prepared which made everything go a lot more smoothly. The money however drove us crazy. Since we didn't know how much money each refugee was going to get we used a random number generator site we found on Google to figure it out for us. The problem with that was that refugees that had high-paying jobs in their original countries could have been randomly been dealt very low amounts of money and refugees being paid little to no income in their original countries (like children) could have been dealt very large amounts of money.
"single-station playtests" and playtest 3 & 4 (final playtest)
Single Station Playtests: Not every group got a single station playtest but very important stations were able to get critiqued by the class by setting up their single station for people to go through. This was very beneficial to them because up until then only a few refugees were able to go through it and during the single station playtests they got to see what it's like having 20-something students go through their station.
Playtest 3: For this playtest we invited a 9th grade class to experience our simulation as refugees. The big difference between this playtest and all of the previous ones was our new location! Instead of a large open lot we used the middle school garden space and the lunch table area of our school. I loved our new space so much more because it was so much more interesting to walk through.
Playtest 4(final playtest): There isn't very much to say about for this playtest solely because not much was changed from the 3rd play test to this one. Instead of 9th graders we had 10th graders go through our simulation and used this final playtest to make some final, minor tweaks.
Playtest 3: For this playtest we invited a 9th grade class to experience our simulation as refugees. The big difference between this playtest and all of the previous ones was our new location! Instead of a large open lot we used the middle school garden space and the lunch table area of our school. I loved our new space so much more because it was so much more interesting to walk through.
Playtest 4(final playtest): There isn't very much to say about for this playtest solely because not much was changed from the 3rd play test to this one. Instead of 9th graders we had 10th graders go through our simulation and used this final playtest to make some final, minor tweaks.
eXhibition day
After a last minute run through with the 8th graders from HTMCV, it was time to put on our simulation for the public. I think it went extremely well based on my observations and the comments we got from refugees after experiencing the Syrian Refugee Simulation. Everyone who came received a packet with their character sheets and money and they were all very into their character and played the part very well. If I could do this project again I would have spent some more time on the look of the exhibition because to an outsider and a passerby it didn't look like much.