NEW YORK VIDEOGAME CRITICS CIRCLE INC
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Mission Statement
The New York Videogame Critics Circle, Inc. (“NYVGCC”) is a not-for-profit corporation that was incorporated in New York on November 1, 2017. NYVGCC advances education and educates the public about technology, videogames, the games and technology industries, and journalism by (i) conducting educational classes and workshops for students and adults, (ii) conducting an educational internship program for students, (iii) providing scholarships to students, and (iv) making grants to other section 501(c)(3) organizations for similar purposes. II. Activities Classes at DreamYard School NYVGCC conducts bimonthly afterschool educational workshops and field trips about journalism, videogames, the gaming and technology industry for students at the DreamYard Preparatory School in the Bronx, New York. DreamYard allows NYVGCC to use free space at the school for conducting its workshops. Students participate in three different types of activities on a rotating basis throughout the year: (i) videogame review writing and feedback exercises, (ii) exercises related to writing, designing, and developing videogames, (iii) discussions about videogame components, including story, art, graphics, character development, game play, music, etc., and (iii) guest lectures presented by professionals in the gaming industry, including writers, developers, graphic artists, directors, etc. NYVGCC selects the topics for each lesson, brings all of the necessary equipment and supplies for conducting the lesson, including consoles, games, and other technology, and recruits instructors and guest lecturers with relevant expertise to teach. Instructors and guest lecturers might include professors, game developers, and members of NYVGCC, all of whom are New York based videogame critics. Whenever possible, NYVGCC will recruit instructors and guest speakers who are willing to volunteer their time. Each year NYVGCC volunteers will escort the participating students on field trips to events and places related to the videogame industry, such as the Game Center at New York University, game development studios, and the Museum of the Moving Image, to teach them about the videogame industry. NYVGCC will provide lunch or snacks for students on field trips and pay for their transportation and entrance fees, if any, for attending the field trip. A member of the faculty of the DreamYard School will enroll students for workshops and field trips on a first-come, first-served basis. NYVGCC expects that 15-20 students will sign up to participate each year. In the future, NYVGCC expects to expand its school-based class program to other public schools in the Bronx and may accept more students in each program each year, depending on the availability of funds and volunteers. Internship Program NYVGCC will conduct a paid educational internship program to teach students about writing, journalism, and working in the videogame industry. During the internship program, interns will learn how to write videogame reviews, articles and other editorial pieces, edit articles, and conduct interviews and their work will be posted on the NYVGCC website (NYGameCritics.com). Each semester, NYVGCC will hire one to three of the most engaged, talented DreamYard students who participated in NYVGCC’s workshops and field trips to be interns for the following semester. In the future, NYVGCC will also consider students who participate in NYVGCC’s educational programs at other schools. NYVGCC will select interns based on writing style, quality, and attendance record. The President of NYVGCC and an editor hired by NYVGCC for $13 per hour will meet with the interns via Skype weekly to assign writing and editing assignments, including interviews with game makers, offer critiques of their work, teach them about digital publishing tools and other software useful to writers, and schedule job shadowing opportunities at game companies, publications, and other companies in the technology industry. NYVGCC will publish the intern’s articles on its website and may submit them to other publications and newsletters in the future. Interns are expected to work six hours each week and are paid minimum wage.
About This Cause
New York Videogame Critics Circle – Overview The New York Videogame Critics Circle is a 501(c)3 non-profit, arts-oriented multicultural organization of 40 journalists. Throughout the year, we are dedicated to mentoring students between the ages of 13 and 18, offering college scholarships and internships, and doing community outreach, especially in communities in low income areas like the Bronx and Lower East Side. For the last four years, we’ve mentored, offered scholarships and overseen interns from the DreamYard Prep School, an Obama White-House lauded arts-oriented school in the Bronx. What We Do A) DreamYard Prep School 1) Twice monthly in-school mentoring 2) Yearly scholarships for freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. 3) Paid internship program where we teach writing and journalism and provide half-day access to, for example, CNET for journalism. We do this so interns can see how journalism and games are made. 4) Provide gaming technology and games to the school, including a high tech computer, an HDTV and game consoles. B) AbronsArtCenter 1) Teaching courses for the community about how to get work in videogames and teaching videogame history. 1a) We also help with their community events. We set up a table, monitors and game consoles so kids and their parents can play with us journalists. We’re doing this three times this summer. C) The New York Game Awards – 1) For the past three years, this yearly event has showcased our mentoring efforts and helps to raise a small amount of money for our outreach efforts. Over the past six years, we’ve grown from 300 viewers to 135,000 viewers. The Daily Show with Trevor Noah does the comedy for us. We use an old theater called the Abrons Playhouse in which Orsen Welles in which Orson Welles used to direct plays. And developers from around the world join us. We always sell out. D) Website We do fine website editorial work at NYGameCritics.com. Our teen intern from the DreamYard School works with us. Kimari Rennis, 15, writes reviews, edits occasionally and interviews game developers. This year, she’s joined by Ronald Gordon, 17, and Desiree Bonilla, 15. E) OATS, Older Adults Technology Services We work at their Senior Planet tech center in Manhattan in Chelsea. There isn’t a lot of research on how to mentor seniors with games. We’ve done well so far, and we’ve worked with Walden, the game about the life of Henry David Thoreau, for a deep dive with seniors. It’s a quiet adventure, not a shooter game. We want to teach seniors not only about games, but how to play them and what to make of them. We hope that they’ll stir thought like the stir thought in us. We’ve done two three-week workshops on VR with seniors as well. F) New York Public Library – Our newest partnership has a group of critics going to school libraries and to the main branch on 42nd Street to offer workshops, readings, outreach about jobs and a panel discussion of the year’s best games. Current And Future Work Into 2018, we expanded our work at the DreamYard to twice monthly. This fall we will have three more satellite Critics Circles at: Lehman College, City Tech College and in the city of Orlando. We feel our model can be extended to other areas. We want to go beyond New York City to other areas of New York State and possibly Newark and Washington, D.C. with our model of mentoring, scholarships, internships and videogames. We want to engage more educators to create an education model that would work beyond New York. To that end, we are working with Professor Helen Pfeffer, a journalist, writer and lauded communications professor who lectures at Marymount Manhattan College, Brooklyn College and Manhattan College.