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May 15, 2005
Salon Report on "Games in Culture" (#3, May 4th)
[check out photos and audio of the event]
On May 4th, Games For Change met for its third Salon in NYC (more are pending in the Bay Area and beyond). The panel session, titled "Games in Culture," was developed and moderated by game designer and author Eric Zimmerman, Founder and CEO of GameLab.
The theme of the presentations and discussion centered on the unique status that games have on our culture, and how games can be used for social change.
Mr. Zimmerman opened the evening’s presentation with a recap of the previous salons and their agenda’s – briefly the 1st focused on funding and the 2nd on case studies and design and production issues. In this Salon, Mr. Zimmerman aimed to expand the conversation by rethinking games and social change – to think in the largest sense about how to approach new solutions and strategies. To that end he assembled a great panel who were each asked to discuss a game or type of game in this context.
Mr. McKenzie Wark, author of the Hacker Manifesto and New School Media Studies Professor, presented what he termed a “cautionary tale” in discussing the Sims and how a sizeable amount of players have been able to ‘reverse engineer’ aspects of the game. As demonstrated through the Sim’s fan site message boards and images, players have been able to use the underlying algorithm and the game’s inherent ability to add objects to actually introduce elements of social change into their virtual ‘communities.’ One of the most striking examples Mr. McKenzie presented was how players have learned that using a “family album’ feature of the game has allowed them to introduce narrative elements into the game. The cautionary aspect of Mr. McKenzie’s presentation was that if the game design allows for player input and modifications – rest assured that they will modify it – in ways you may not expect. Mr. McKenzie presented a few posts from a Sims users’ “Wish List” message board – and nearly all were requests for more ‘vice.’
The next speaker was Carol Stakenas, Program Officer at the International Center for Tolerance Education. Ms. Stakenas spoke of the University of Minnesota’s “Big Urban Game (BUG”), which took place in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. In this game, teams of players moved giant game pieces (they looked remarkably like giant “Sorry!” pieces) around the city. The public participated by voting online on the path the teams should take through the city. Ms. Stakenas was impressed by how the play of the game brought the pieces through a variety of landscapes – how it not only turned the cities into a giant game board, but how in the process it highlighted economy, class, infrastructure and rights issues. She also made a point of differentiating BUG from somewhat similar ideas such as PacManhattan and Can You See Me Now? – the latter two being games where the technology needed to participated narrowed the amount of people who could be included.
Karen Sideman, Game Designer and former creative Director of Sesame Workshop Online, gave a presentation that fit nicely with the previous two, by focusing on online communities that have taken on a life of their own. The most fascinating case Ms. Sideman presented was about Nation States. What initially had been a promotional tool for a book by author Max Barry was, in essence, taken over by its community of users. The community established its own set of rules – and the community keeps growing, with fans even building a Nation States Wikipedia.
A lively discussion between panelists and attendees followed, the general topic being that game developers can often not determine what player behaviors will be until the behaviors start to emerge. In the case of the Sims, we learned that players were not satisfied with a certain lack of narrative and social issues, and so they took it upon themselves to change this. In the same manner, users of Nation States collectively decided they too felt constrained, and again took matters into their own hands.
[check out photos and audio]
Posted by jtroy at May 15, 2005 09:51 PM