RISTA member cartoon guy    robot cartoon

Robots in Service to America

The Story


Aug. 23, 2165 (Provo, Utah) – When your friends and coworkers warned you about becoming a RISTA volunteer during its inaugural year, you weren’t sure whether to take them seriously or not. Certainly they were apprehensive to see you spend an entire year in a whole new community. And there certainly are a lot of misunderstandings about living in a community affected by poverty.
But, on the other hand, you read all those newspaper editorials clattering excitedly about the new, more efficient and cost-effective restructuring of America’s national service programming. Who wouldn’t be happy to hear about the reconditioning of WarBots following the recent unequivocal conclusion of the War on Terror? “Swords into ploughshares!” rang the headlines. “Mission accomplished!”
And when your acceptance letter arrived with instructions to attend training in the middle of nowhere, you finally felt the rush of the adventure. What good is an adventure without risk?

Arriving in Provo, the town is empty. Literally void of humanity. You check in at the hotel’s front desk through the concierge computer and head to drop your bags off in your room. There’s no conference registration, either. However, a sign of hope: You find a gray, hooded sweatshirt in your room. It’s a left over with last year’s pre-restructuring logo on it.

You explore the town and the only place that’s not shuttered is the Mardi Gras theme bar across the street. You can only peek your head in because you don’t have a bar membership. Then again: No bartender, no bouncer. All you can see is a trio of animatronic karaoke singers a la Chuck E. Cheese. They’re creepy, though, wearing nothing but beads, cold, red eyes and American flag breastplates. They’re singing, “We Are the World.”

You’re relieved when the scheduled last day of training arrives and you can hear the hum of a vacuum and other patters and clangs outside. Certainly everyone has arrived on the last day to take their service pledge.

And as you open the doors to the Zion-Bryce Ballroom, all you can think to yourself is, “why would they be vacuuming so loudly on such an auspicious day?”

Artist’s Statement for Robots in Service to America

Robots in Service to America is a thrilling puzzle/action computer game inspired in parts by the classic Sokoban sliding box puzzle game and by a lesser known MS-DOS monster squishing game called Beast. I’ve pondered different ways to adapt and expand on the monster squishing premise of Beast since middle school and I’m surprised and elated how well my game model has translated compared to the fun monochrome, text-based chases from my childhood.

RISTA is also intended to spread the word about the multiplicative power of indirect, capacity building service, such as volunteering, fundraising and community development. Explaining indirect service to outsiders is a daily occurrence as a VISTA member, so, by modeling this idea in interactive media, I am hoping to capture the audience’s attention in a new way in order to foster a greater understanding of VISTA service.

About the Author
Mark Wilson is currently a third year AmeriCorps VISTA member in Portland, Oregon. He has a BA degree in Journalism/Computer Science from Indiana University—Bloomington. In addition to being a computer nerd and a national service nerd, Mark enjoys participating in Portland’s bicycle culture.
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