Mission US currently has nearly 1 million registered users, according to WNET, the New York City public television station that produces and distributes the series. The game includes four “missions,” each of which explores a different era of U.S. history.
“Our goal [with ‘Flight to Freedom’] is for all students to develop a greater respect for African-Americans’ struggle and African-American history as a part of American history,” said Kellie Castruita Specter, WNET’s senior director of communications and marketing, in a statement. “Although we regret to hear that some people have found the game to be problematic, we stand by it.”
Experts on U.S. slavery and “racial literacy” consulted by Education Week said they welcomed the potential for digital games and other new-media formats to help students explore even the most troubling chapters of American history—if such games can be used in ways the don’t simply reflect and repeat the deep-rooted problems inherent in the more traditional classroom methods currently in use.
“We’re already teaching slavery in a way that’s inaccurate, insensitive, and ahistorical,” said James Braxton Peterson, the director of the Africana Studies department at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
“I’m actually in favor of a more sophisticated, enhanced version of this game.”