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April 20, 2005
Second Games for Change Salon a hit (March 29)
[check out photos and audio of the event]
The second Games for Change salon was held on March 29th at the offices of the Fund for the City of New York, which has been kind enough to donate their time, space and equipment to Games for Change.
Guests came from universities, non-profits, and game development companies - many from the city, but also from Massachusetts and Maryland, showing the growing interest in this topic. Everyone enjoyed snacks and beverages in a great lobby space before the meeting proper. Barry Joseph in particular noted the high quality of the rugelah provided. Barry and Suzanne Seggerman greeted the guests and gave brief overviews of the organization's mission and their recent trip to San Francisco for the Game Developer's Conference.
The presentations got off to a great start with Mary McCormick, director of the Fund for the City of New York. Ms. McCormick highlighted a number of the Fund's programs and reiterated her support of serious games. She demonstrated some remarkable work - Flash versions of children's storybooks that are interactive, and have been made so that they can be viewed in English and Spanish, and more languages to come. The work is done all in-house by a group of dedicated students, interns, and employees.
Benjamin Stokes of NetAidwas next with a case study of their "Peter Packet" game and Challenge, which aimed to educate and involve middle school players in the fight against global poverty. Mr. Stokes remarked that young people not only found the game appealing, but that players also many participated in the game’s real-world Challenge to raise awareness. In the Challenge, players earned points by sending emails to friends and family that encouraged dialog, participation and donations. NetAid is building on the success and lessons learned from Peter Packet as it develops a new "World Council" game, which we look forward to hearing more about.
Following Benjamin Stokes was Alex Kopelman of Girls Inc. to give a case study. Mr. Kopelman noted that Girls Inc. was looking for an online game for their site to create stickiness on the site, as well as provide educational content and meet user demand. Together with Large Animal Games (Wade Tinney of this game development company was also in attendance), Girls Inc. has developed a very popular game that emphasizes teamwork. There were a few remarkable statistics for this game - over 75000 people have played online, and 35, 000 have downloaded it. When users download and unlock the full game, they are given the ability to design and add their own levels, which can be uploaded to to a server for others to play. What was really amazing about this is that over 1200 levels have been user created. A great presentation with lots of food for thought.
A formal question and answer session was held following the presentation, with issues such as COPPA regulations and everyone's favorite, development costs, being the most discussed. This was followed by a good 1/2 hour or so of socializing. This Salon added a new element - guests were invited to demo work they had done - lots of great ideas were shown and exchanged. It is to be hoped that we will have more of this in future Salons. Thank you to everyone who participated and attended, and especially to our gracious and generous hosts, Mary McCormick and Aldrin Bonilla of the Fund for the City of New York.
[check out photos and audio of the event]
Posted by jtroy at April 20, 2005 11:53 PM