The following article about our electronic game project, Breakaway, appeared in the Shelburne News weekly newspaper.
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http://www.shelburnenews.com

A two-year project with Population Media Center (PMC) in Shelburne and Champlain College, with the support of the United Nations, made its worldwide debut this week during the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. PMC, an organization with expertise in behavior change, and Champlain College designed an online game, entitled “Breakaway,” a tactical and narrative soccer (football) game that has been under development and testing since 2008. The game has been developed to tackle issues such as gender equality, fair team play, and racial stereotypes all within the constructs of a fun and interactive online experience.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 22, 2010

Contact: Katie Elmore
Director of Communications
Tel: 802-985-8156 ext. 205
elmore@populationmedia.org

Online Football Game Launches June 22 to Global Audience
World Cup Soccer Star Samuel Eto’o Joins United Nations ‘Breakaway’ Team

Breakaway, a new narrative-driven online football (soccer) game, endorsed by world-famous football star, Samuel Eto’o, hits the global gaming field of play at noon Tuesday, June 22 during the 2010 Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup in South Africa.
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PMC’s electronic game project, Breakaway, was featured on Fox 44 News.

Click here to learn more about Breakaway.

The following article from The Burlington Free Press, features PMC’s electronic game project.
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A student-designed electronic soccer game that will make its debut in two weeks, during the World Cup, is a “Breakaway” in more ways than one.

For starters, that’s the title of the game, more than two years in development at Champlain College’s Emergent Media Center and heavily promoted by the United Nations for its persuasive subtext: preventing violence against women. The target audience: soccer-minded boys age 8-15 throughout the world.

But the game exemplifies its name in other ways: It’s an episodic, tactical Web-based diversion that features not only soccer moves, but also more than a dozen characters and a running narrative that’s based on the Sabido method — a technique for influencing behavior that’s been perfected by the Population Media Center of Shelburne, a key adviser in the project. The method has infused TV serial dramas used to promote public-awareness campaigns in Third World countries around such issues as AIDS and birth control.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Stephen Mease
Public Information & News Director
802-865-6432
smease@champlain.edu
www.champlain.edu

Student-Designed ‘Breakaway’ E-Game Ready for Play

With support of the United Nations and behavior change expertise of Population Media Center, a two-year project by Champlain College will make its worldwide debut later this month during the 2010 Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup in South Africa. Over 70 Champlain College students from a wide array of majors are developing an innovative, episodic web-based soccer game for boys ages 8-15.

The online game, entitled Breakaway, is a tactical and narrative soccer (football) game that has been under development and testing since 2008 at the Champlain College Emergent Media Center (EMC). Students have traveled to Cape Town, South Africa and St. Lucia to research how best to tailor a game toward youth on a global level.
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Moboid – Heather Kelley blog

http://www.rapport.moboid.com/?p=236

As World Cup 2010 approaches, let me direct your attention to Breakaway, a game sponsored by the United Nations with the goal to end violence against women by reaching out to young men around the world. Through exciting football (soccer) gameplay and intriguing character and story, the game reveals issues of gender discrimination and violence, and offer alternatives. The hope is to end violent and discriminatory acts against women and girls before they even start.
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PMC’s electronic game project, Breakaway, was recently featured in Champlain College’s Champlain View Spring 2010 edition.

Champlain View Spring 2010 – Breakaway (PDF, 363 KB)

For more information on this project, visit http://www.populationmedia.org/where/worldwide/.

PMC has been working in partnership with Emergent Media Center on an electronic game for adolescent boys aimed at preventing violence against women. The game is called Breakaway and will launch at the 2010 FIFA Cup in South Africa. For more information on the game, visit: http://www.populationmedia.org/where/worldwide/

Here is a short trailer of the game.

In Development at Champlain College: a Video Game to Help Prevent Domestic Violence

By Jill Laster

A team at Champlain College wants to educate boys about the effects of violence against women. So they are creating a product using two things that appeal to their target audience: soccer and video games.

The university’s Emergent Media Center is working on a project with a grant from United Nations Population Fund to design a game for boys between 9 and 13. The project, created with support from the Population Media Center, features soccer matches broken up by narrative sections, with players facing social decisions on and off the field. The game should appear online sometime in March, and the production team will formally debut the game during the 2010 World Cup in South Africa this summer.

Ann DeMarle, the Emergent Media Center’s director, said that the group chose soccer because it is a sport popular around the globe — perfect for a game that the U.N. and Champlain hope will have international appeal. It also provides a competitive environment where sportsmanship lessons can be taught, Ms. DeMarle said, and it interests boys who are at age when they look to peers for how to behave.
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Below is a link to an interview with Ann DeMarle from Emergent Media Center. PMC is working with Emergent Media Center and UNFPA to create an electronic game for adolescent boys aimed at preventing violence against women.

What do you want people to know about the project?

Ann: My answer to that is two-fold. One, violence against women is a huge global problem; that’s the most important thing for people to know. Secondly, we’re using a medium,games, that has been labeled as promoting violence, and we’re taking it and applying it in the opposite direction, to create behavior changes to end violence. It’s not as easy to accomplish as I wish it would be.

For full article, visit:
http://www.canow.org/canoworg/2009/10/