Daron Austin: Steps to Success
ARTIST STATEMENT
My exhibition is based on my life. For my senior show, I created a video game that reflects my experiences growing up, which formed the person I am today. I lived in a low-income neighborhood with very few opportunities. I often took to video games to escape the harsh reality of the world such as living in an unsafe area and being different in a world that doesn’t like you . The games allowed me to escape the world but still learn from it and how it was educational in its own way. The games allowed me to learn things others might not have, such as knowing how to stay safe in an unsafe environment and how to deal with certain problems or even simple history or math and that has allowed me to incorporate what I learned in the real world as well. I encountered different challenges and people . At times, I failed. I also kept coming back but many of my friends didn’t. They failed and couldn’t come back so they chose to follow a different, more destructive path and see them struggle to come back from that and even struggle to remain in that path. Additionally, the video games allowed me to connect with others because we talked about the games we played and how it made us feel; these exchanges resulted in friendships in school and beyond. That’s where my love for video games came from.
My thesis is taking the idea of creating a video game that is strictly about learning from failures and having characters lead you in the right direction so you can be successful and learn from mistakes as you make life’s journey. For this game, I drew upon many principles of my real life and individuals in my life and incorporated them into the game to make the game reflect me. Themes such as death, different personalities, and having to make decisions and deal with the consequences of what you do. Since I based the experiences and my friends in my world, I hope that people who look like me and grew up in a similar circumstance might also feel able to relate to someone they look like. I hope it will help people understand that they can use the skills they have learned in the game and put that in a real life situation. Through my video game, I share what I learned and show younger African-Americans kids that when you fail once you are still able to come back and pick yourself up and succeed from it.
I used forms to help express my identity, make a dynamic world, and connect with new young users. Using gold in many pieces conveys the success in them due to gold being involved with the word success. Many other colors in the pieces make you feel certain emotions and help the used understand each character and what they bring to the table. For example, blue means to be reliable and dependable and something that makes you happy and calm when you see it. Deciding to use characters that have the same brown colored skin tone will allow for others to see someone that looks like them and as a young African – American that would mean the world to them. My work delves into how I saw many friends fail and never come back from the bad path that they led themselves on and struggle to come to terms. I took the different statistics on how different kids take information from games and how they can take from this. I want this not just to be a game they play but something they put down and feel like something changed within themselves.
