Black Digerati recently reported that Georgia Tech and Morehouse College are partnering up to research a project aimed at using video games to increase the interest of young African American men in careers in computer science.

The program, Glitch, is funded by the National Science Foundation and employs dozens of Atlantan teens as game testers. Kids tested games for companies like Electronic Arts, Cartoon Network, and GameTap.

Betsy DiSalvo, student at Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing PhD and Glitch’s lead researcher, played a vital role in the project. DiSalvo became interested in the subject after studying some statistics concerning African American gamers.

In an interview with Noire Digerati she said “that is a very dramatic [contrast compared to] people who do use game interest as an entry point into computer science,” she said.

“What I found” DiSalvo said to Digerati. “Was this really strong sense of sportsmanship and social play, And because of that, they weren’t cheating, modding, or hacking the games at all. They were pretty much playing the games straight out of the boxes the way they were intended to be played. They weren’t seeing games as something that could be manipulated, or something they had power over.”

DiSalvo and other researchers began to find ways for people “break the games open,” despite codes of sportsmanship and fair play. They came up with and interesting solution: game testing.
Glitch Game Testers was born June 2008 and continues strong, helping young African Americans open up new career avenues. Glitch is a success and has gone farther than expected, according to DiSalvo. “[They] are trying to turn them from being just consumers, to being producers of technology. Not just producing with technology, not just using software, but actually producing the software itself,” Disalvo explained.

Corey Steward, Computer Science major at Georgia Tech, Glitch research assistant and black man, said he related to the boys in the program. He recalled enjoying computer science as a child but being distance from an opportunity to be in contact with it. The highest level tech course available to him was a typing course.

DiSalvo believes Glitch and similar programs may have a lasting impact in the U.S. She has formulated two possible models for imitating and applying Glitch outside of the current program.
Disalvo told Digerati “one way is to launch Glitch as a brand and actually set this up as a larger company and open up other offices to do this,” she said. “[The other way would include] an existing game company or game testing company. You could put this in as a high school program.”

Steward also believes in the potential of Glitch saying that it “can grow way beyond a research program.”

“You can put this in communities and give kids resources they wouldn’t normally have, or [put people in place] who can teach them things they wouldn’t normally learn,” he said.
Special thanks to www.blackdigerati.org for covering the story.