“Josh’s World,” a CD-ROM interactive children's PC game for kids,
ages 2-9 is the culmination of a dream of my husband’s and mine.
The road to “Josh’s World” has spanned over six years from idea to reality,
but it really began nineteen years ago. Struggling to survive in the little
town of Ashland, Oregon, I was working at the Shakespeare Festival Box
Office while attending college to acquire an elementary teaching certificate.
My husband was working at a local restaurant at night and taking care of
our 2-year-old daughter during the day. After reading a book about the
computer revolution, we acquired a small loan from a local bank for a Radio
Shack Model I computer. We spent many long hours teaching ourselves everything
we needed to know about the computer’s operation, taking it apart, learning
its modular structure and studying business software and their applications.
It wasn’t long before my husband was hitchhiking to town with our daughter
knocking on local business doors selling our services as computer consultants.
The reception from local businesses was cool, but we didn’t give up, didn’t
let constant rejections deter us from our goal.
After five years, I was teaching a computer class at a local elementary
school and we had a struggling computer sales and consulting business that
eventually evolved into 3D art and graphics servicing the computer gaming
industry. We volunteered for the Computer Game Development Conference that
is held every year in California and met many people in the industry. Having
seen how engaging kid's software if for children, we started dreaming about
developing quality games that feature positive role models for children.
The real world Joshua in the children's computer game is the six-year-old
version of the one-year-old boy I cared for ten months while his mother,
Michelle Blackmon, an actress, performed at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival
in 1996. Being a single mother in the performing arts required many hours
away from her child. Hence, I became Joshua’s other Mama.
Talking to my husband one afternoon after Joshua and his mother had
left for Seattle after the end of the theatre season, we were reminiscing
about our time with Joshua and missing him terribly. Our daughter was now
a teenager. Joshua had brought us back to those magic years of the young
child. At the time, we were offering a practicum to college students in
multimedia production. Again, our dream about producing a truly positive
interactive computer game for young children re-emerged, but we wanted
it to be unique, capturing the wonder and curiosity of the young child.
We both agreed we wanted to create a magic 3D world for these little
people where they could explore different environments and at the same
time offer options to those children who preferred to play games.
An associate of my husband’s, a 3D artist who was between projects,
expressed interest in our project. We asked him if he’d like to create
an environment for the young child. He came up with the first few huts,
which would later become part of "Josh's World.”
Then along can Bart Platt and Kelly Rossi, two practicum students, who
worked two terms together designing what was to become, in the final production,
the night side of "Josh's World.” Bart continued working on "Josh's World"
through his senior year coming up with a complete game design. He brought
his design to us on the heels of an inheritance I had just received after
the death of my beloved father. Instead of investing in the stock market,
as I had been encouraged to do by other family members, I decided to invest
in our dream. The stock market was about money. This project was about
people.
Enter Larry Vaughn, programmer and 3D artist, who had worked with my
husband as a practicum student a few years back. After leaving college,
he was hired on by a major gaming company and was between jobs.
With the collaboration of these two talented young men, my husband and
myself, young Joshua and his mother, and all those other practicum students
who learned multimedia production while building on our dream, we came
up with what is now “Josh’s World.”
While filming Joshua in Seattle, his mother, Michelle, commented on
how smoothly everything was coming together. “ I guess this is meant to
be,” she said with a grand smile.
She was right! After 6 years of hard work on our dream we have produced
"Josh's World". You can find more on "Josh's World" on our web site http://www.joshsworld.net.
Featuring Josh, a young African-American, as the lead in our computer
game, we have produced one of the few computer games featuring a positive
African-American role model for children. This aspect of our title is really
exciting to us. "Josh's World,” in a clear, uncontrived fashion, provides
children the fun and delight of engaging in a 3D interactive play land
they can explore, with Josh there to provide help and companionship along
the way.
