Earning your stripes

As Young explains the situation, he also begins to explain how gang activity has changed over the last 20 years in Chicago. Many older gang members are either dead or in prison, he says. That means the city's larger gangs have broken up. The result is that many smaller groups have formed to fill the void. The members of those groups are younger than ever before, with less experience running a criminal organization and less control over their members.

Gang culture on the South Side looks like chaos to those who don't live there, but Young was able to translate for Block how it all makes a kind of sense. It's this first hand information that Block will need to get across to those who play his game.

In order to be initiated into a gang, Young says that other young men and women in The Gardens allow themselves to be beaten by older gang members. Once initiated, the easiest way to move up in the ranks, to "earn your stripes" as he puts it, is to commit petty crimes or violently assault people. Young says he was always in danger of being attacked, that by choosing to remain unaffiliated with gangs he made himself an easy target.

Each individual block of The Gardens has its own miniature gang. Just walking from where Young lived on Block 17 to where his cousin lived on Block 2 required him to move through multiple gang territories. He remembers his first time being caught in the crossfire.

"They just went to shootin'," he says. "I stopped. I didn't know what to do. Because I had never been exposed to that type of environment until I moved out there. I started looking around, and other people yelled to me; 'Get on the ground! Get on the ground! Get under the car!'

"So I had to get on the ground, get under the car and wait for it to stop. And soon as it stopped, I ran all the way home."

Young says his salvation was his family. His mother and father kept him busy with sports, often through basketball and baseball programs sponsored by the Chicago Police Department. Then when he was 16 he got his first job, working the cash register at a local Wendy's restaurant. But even while at work he wasn't safe.

One of his coworkers was a gang member, and when Young accidentally flashed a common gang sign, the coworker took offense and threatened him. That's when Young's cousin, also a gang member, came into work trying to protect him.

"My cousin was a freshman," Young says. "I was a junior in high school. And he came up there to [my coworker and said], 'Look, mess with my cousin if you want to. You gonna be gone.'"

"I had to talk to him like, tell him 'No. Don't handle it like that.' Because I don't really believe in violence."

It was Young's first experience talking people down from deadly force. And it wouldn't be his last. These, and many other anecdotes from Young's life, have created the rough outline for Block's game.

Today Young is a working hip-hop artist. While those around him continued with the gang lifestyle, he found his way out of The Gardens through music. He doesn't glorify gangs in his songs, and he says he's one of the few who won't degrade women. The man who now calls himself Solo Xquisit feels lucky. And he knows that music might not be the best way out of gang culture for everyone.

"To be truthful," Young says, "what the South Side needs more than anything is a leader. Someone that can come out here and be a mentor, create after school programs at the community centers.

"I feel that if they have community centers, or different types of organizations to occupy kids and teenagers, then people will know there is hope."

In addition to his music career, Young works as a mentor for Chicago's All Star Project, Inc., an organization dedicated to promoting self-esteem and leadership skills to children through music and dance. Young helps counsel teenagers away from gang violence, but he also teaches them the technical aspects of recording, coaching them to create stage performances. Together with other mentors and instructors, the All Stars create an educational curriculum that teaches South Side kids independence and self-respect. Then they partner with corporations around the country, like Direct TV, to get kids internships and, later, jobs. It's a sophisticated approach, and there are more organizations like them trying to make a difference on Chicago's South Side.

But Block says that the Chicago All Stars, and other nonprofits in the city like Young Chicago Authors, need money to keep performing their mission.They also need volunteers, community activists and leaders like Sean Young.

Block sees that need as an opportunity to do more than just make a game that promotes empathy across racial and class divides. He thinks that his game can raise money as well as support for South Side nonprofits, that it can help to fund the next generation of leaders like Sean Young.