Blog

CBS News Covers Games for Change, Highlights Mallika Dutt as a Presenter

CBS News highlights the “explosion” of Facebook games, with a nod to Mallika, Breakthrough and America 2049! Read the article here.  

Tablet Magazine Talks to Mallika About Developing America 2049 and Gaming for Good

Tablet Magazine lauds America 2049 as a solid, worthwhile and interesting game among the “din of popular culture,” and highlights the development collaboration with Hasia Diner, professor of history and the director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History at New York University, whose historical research helped complete the fabric of the game. Mallika is quoted as saying gaming can be a way to “engage a community of people across issues and across identities.” Read the full article here.

Mallika Dutt & LOST’s Harold Perrineau on RH Reality Check Podcast

On June 5th, Reproductive Health Reality Check, a website committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights, interviewed Mallika and Harold Perrineau, known for his role as Michael on the television show Lost. Mallika talks about America 2049, Breakthrough’s Facebook game, as a means to bring more attention to human rights issues. Harold Perrineau describes his interest in sexuality and immigration issues as a catalyst for his involvement in America 2049. Read more and listen to the podcast here.

Mallika in Top 50 Most Influential People of Verve Power Issue

Mallika is featured and interviewed in the June 2011 Verve India magazine. This issue, the Power Issue, champions India’s 50 most influential women. Mallika is among many amazing women in the top 50, including Kareena Kapoor and Sonia Gandhi.

Read it here!

ICED in the news – who knew?

A couple of months ago, Breakthrough, the human rights group that I run, introduced our new video game, ICED, at the Games for Change conference. ICED focuses on detentions and deportations and allows the player to pick one of five characters to experience the massive problems with the 1996 immigration laws.

I was interviewed by the LA Times and forgot all about it because the interview did not get published until almost a month later. And then wham, the day it came out, our office phone was ringing off the hook – FOX News being the first to call.

The kind of media attention we’ve gotten as a result of ICED is the stuff that non-profit dreams are made of. Unsolicited mainstream media for three weeks non-stop. It’s been rather instructive and has as all trying to figure out how best to use this opportunity to reframe some of the immigration issues.

Here’s what I mean. The 1996 immigration laws apply to legal permanent residents, students visa and work visa holders AND undocumented people. But the only thing the media wants to talk about are the undocumented folks. The right has done its job well – focus all discussion of immigration policy on undocumented folks taking over our country and getting unfair advantage of Americans. What about all the legal residents who are getting deported for really minor crimes? What about their families who are being devastated by an ill-thought out immigration law?

I’m wondering where the voices of all those Americans are who are being affected by these insane laws. There are millions of households with green card holders/legal permanent residents who are at risk. How about understanding the need to create a fair immigration policy for everybody!