Scenarios and Personas

Persona
Sarah is a 17-year old senior in Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn. She has just started learning how to play Tekken 5, but is not very good. She doesn’t drink alcohol, so she likes to go to the arcade in Chinatown on Friday and Saturday nights to hang out with her friends. Sometimes she is self-conscious about playing the game at the arcade because most of the gamers are boys and they are better than she is. As a result, she doesn’t get as much playing time, which makes it harder for her to improve her skills. Like many high school students in the city, she is dependent on her cell phone to keep in touch with her friends and stay in the know. Sarah uses it for calling her buddies, text messaging, and instant messenger. During the week, she also likes to socialize over online games. Every now and then she logs into www.ijji.com to play Switcheroo and to chat with her friends and other players. Sometimes, she even gets to talk some trash.

Scenario
It’s Friday evening, and the school week is over. Sarah had a tough week with midterms, but she’s made plans with her friends to meet up at the arcade in Chinatown around 8 p.m. The arcade usually gets pretty crowded on the weekend evenings, so Sarah decides to go early to get some practice on her new favorite game, Tekken 5. She’s only been playing the game for a couple of weeks, so she gets nervous whenever someone challenges her.

Just then, a young male in his late 20s puts a quarter on the machine.

“Here we go, “ Sarah thinks to herself. “Time to get beat up.”

Sarah quickly loses to a quick combo attack. Another player steps in and she calmly places a quarter on the screen.

The new challenger loses just as quickly, and Sarah gets another shot. “Block and sweep,” she thinks to herself.

After loosing the first round, Sarah notices that the arcade is filling up. There is now a crowd of six or seven spectators watching her play. The second round starts. She scores a few blows, but then quickly succumbs to a vicious onslaught.

Head down, she is quickly enveloped by the crowd. From the back row, she can see a sliver of the screen between two large shoulders.

“It sucks back here. I’m never going to get to play now,” she mutters.

“Sarah! What’s up?!!” exclaim Mary and Trevor.

“Just in time,” says Sarah, “I just got booted off, so it’s great to have my peeps here. Now I’ve got some backup.”

Sarah pulls her phone out and drafts the text message “1: afraid 2 fight a girl?” She sends the message to F-E-E-L M-Y P-A-I-N. The message appears in the upper left-hand corner of the game screen. The two gamers laugh out loud and continue playing.

Mary whispers to Sarah, “Write something better. Put it in the middle of the screen. Write ‘you suck’.”

Sarah types “12,13,14: u sux. That was close”. The message appears in the middle of screen, blocking the view of the challenger.

“Raaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” screams the champion as he delivers a final blow to the challenger.

“Damn!” screams the challenger, as he throws his arms up into the air. “I couldn’t see anything under that stupid message. I’m gonna text the @#$#@, #@$@#, *#(J@#$@ out of whoever’s next!” he exclaimed as he fights his way into the crowd.

“You can’t beat the people’s choice!” shouts the champ. “Go get the champ some water. I’m thirsty for more!”

Sarah steps up and puts her quarter from the screen into the machine. She rehearses her favorite combo in her head.

As the game starts, the screen is replaced in full by a window with text that reads, “Ur quarter’s no good here! Hope u brought your piggy bank.” The speakers start blaring “Oink! Oink! Oink!”

Sarah and the champ turn their heads toward the crowd to see the loser of the last game laughing with his friends.

“No you didn’t!” screams Sarah.

posted by Megumiaraki @ 9:01 PM