My main failure for this week was in my brainstorming for Hack #2. At first, I wanted to make a statement about the United States’ “Prevention Through Deterrence” immigration policy. This is a policy that essentially forces migrants through the Sonoran Desert by increasing the number of border patrol officers at checkpoints. The idea is that more patrolling will make people less likely to try and enter the country illegally. It actually doesn’t stop anybody, though. It just causes people to go through the desert and they often die due to the brutal desert conditions before they can reach America. The United States Government then gets to skirt the blame for their deaths and blame it on the environment. This is something I think about a lot because it is just so cruel. I thought about making a game intervention to bring awareness to this policy, but I just couldn’t think of a truly thoughtful and respectful way to do that through a game. The brutal dying doesn’t make for a very respectful game. I couldn’t think of a way to honor real people’s horror stories in a way that made me feel genuine. So, I decided to go with reskinning Chutes and Ladders. I had to be very intentional and thoughtful to consider a multitude of privileges and lack of privileges. I think the 32 cards I came up with do a decent job, but I’m always thinking of new cards I could add if I decided to expand on this project for my final.

Another failure I am having is that I can’t get my posts to get picked up by the website even if I’m categorizing them.