On May 27th, I had the exciting opportunity to travel to Boston to visit friend and lab collaborator, Andrew Schartmann, to lend my voice to a non-playable character in InvestiDate, our new safe sex and healthy dating videogame for Black teen girls.
In InvestiDate, Brandon is a young Black college student in a committed relationship who provides advice to players on how to talk to partners about subjects that are sometimes difficult to navigate, like requesting and recognizing sexual consent, getting treated for an STI including HIV, and communicating openly and honestly with romantic partners about STI status and testing. Brandon offers what he knows or thinks about situations players encounter throughout the game like a protective older friend would, speaking from his own experience in the hope that the lessons he learned by making mistakes in his own dating life would be helpful for his younger friends. Writing Brandon’s character with the play4REAL team was a rewarding and somewhat introspective process. Partly rooted in conversations our team had with current Black teen girls about boys they know, partly rooted in my memories of the early years of college and vision of the kind of mentor I would have liked to call from time to time, Brandon was entirely new, yet felt grounded.
As I boarded the Amtrak, I imagined what it would be like embodying a younger, fictional version of myself through just a voice performance, which I had never really done before. I felt nervous about if the age gap between myself and my character would become apparent and read as inauthentic, or if my lack of experience voice recording would mean butchered lines, a bunch of unnecessary repeated takes and a frustrated Andrew. Still, I could not help but be excited to try my hand at recording and my first time working with someone on one of our projects in-person rather than through a webcam via Zoom. I never imagined that working on a behavioral intervention could mean sitting down in front of a microphone to record (and re-record) lines in the name of HIV/STI prevention.
Once I arrived at Andrew’s home and sat down in front of the microphone, my fears about the vocal performance aspect fell away, and after a few minutes testing the setup, we were off! Despite my initial concerns, the lines typically were not tough to record all the way through without mistakes, although some of the medical terms had me tongue-tied for one or two takes. Two hours, plenty of laughs, and a couple of pages of dialog later, we were finished, and I began my trip back to the other side of town to finish my day working on projects from a local café before booking my ticket back to New Haven.
That trip was one of several hidden highlights of my time working at play4REAL during the pandemic. I am incredibly grateful to have contributed to this project in a way I never expected, making this special memory in the process, and I cannot wait to play the finished game with everyone soon!
-Brandon Sands
2nd Year Research Associate
