This interactive experience would make the player experience the feelings of burnout that I am going through at this moment, as well as the judgment and high expectations of being successful as a second-generation immigrant.
To do this, I broke the game down into two parts. The first was a narrative dialogue influenced by the conversations my dad and I usually have at our dining room table. I usually work there, and my dad often tells stories about his childhood growing up in rural Mexico and how little resources he had compared to myself. To give an example of the type of socioeconomic status my parents had, - my grandfather was a shepherd who had no other choice but to sell all of his sheep to pay for medical treatment for his dying mother. While all of his sheep/income was gone, he only saw the option of coming to America to escape poverty as he had to take care of 8 kids. Because of this, many of my relatives.
This is just one story that my dad would tell me. Others were about how dangerous it was living in Compton during the Rodney King Riots or how his siblings wouldn’t be able to attend school and receive a third-grade education because they would have to take care of the other siblings, making it almost impossible to integrate into American society and obtain the American dream of financial prosperity.
These stories were always a form of motivation and for me to look for opportunities to better myself in my academic and my career because if I didn’t, I would be a slap in the face to my aunts and uncles who never could go to school, and study something that they are passionate about. That being said, having that weight of wanting to show a positive image to my family is highly exhausting, causing me to be burnt out. This causes me to sacrifice my sleep, health, energy, and relationships to try and do my best in my academics and career.
The second portion of the game is the DDR-inspired version, in which I desperately try to access the things that make me happy. Still, I have to sacrifice time for romantic and platonic relationships, sleep, energy, etc.
The music is from an Instagram rant from the Mexican-American LA Graffiti Artist Sandone about second-generation Mexican-Americans not taking advantage of the opportunities that are available to them in America. I chose this audio to remix because it is the metric that is often being told to me and that I try to achieve….sometimes not being able to achieve, which results in my burnout.
