7th Annual Games for Change Festival Video Now Online!

Posted by Mark Smith on 08-02-10

Video from the 7th Annual Games for Change Festival is now available online!  Use the widgets after the jump to view the videos by day or you may click here to see all of the videos from G4C.

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Asi Burak and Michelle Byrd Named as Co-Presidents of Games for Change

Posted by Mark Smith on 07-12-10

For Immediate Release – New York, NY (July 12, 2010) – The Board of Directors of Games for Change announced today the appointment of Asi Burak and Michelle Byrd as Co-Presidents of Games for Change, the leading global advocate for making and supporting digital social impact games.

Mr. Burak and Ms. Byrd will work together on the strategic vision of the organization and will jointly oversee all programmatic initiatives.  Mr. Burak will take the lead on curation, development, and execution of programs and services to raise the production, quality and influence of social impact games, and serves as a spokesperson for the organization.  Ms. Byrd will take the lead on institutional relationship and partnership efforts, along with fundraising, business affairs, financial management, and communications strategy.

Both have extensive backgrounds in media for social change.  Mr. Burak recently joined Games for Change as Executive Producer and was previously Co-Founder of Impact Games, creators of the internationally acclaimed “PeaceMaker” and ”Play the News” platforms.  Ms. Byrd began consulting with Games for Change earlier this year and previously served for 12 years as Executive Director of the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP), the oldest and largest organization of independent filmmakers in the U.S.

“The combined skills, experience and passion of Asi and Michelle will help to scale Games for Change’s global reach and impact,“ says Alan Gershenfeld, Chairman of the Board. “The board is confident in their ability to successfully build upon the great momentum created by the previous leadership team led by Co-Founder and President Suzanne Seggerman and Executive Director Alex Quinn.”
The appointment of Mr. Burak and Ms. Byrd signals a desire to expand the organization’s current portfolio of activities beyond its well-established Games for Change Festival, the only event dedicated to the growing movement of Digital Games for Social Change. The Festival convenes leaders from government, philanthropy, civil society, academia, and the game industry. The 7th Annual Festival was held in May in New York City and was headlined by The Honorable Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra.

The appointment of Mr. Burak and Ms. Byrd will also enable Games for Change to expand its suite of services. Recently, in response to numerous requests from the public and private sector, Games for Change launched a new service to provide strategic guidance to impact-focused organizations in clarifying the objectives of their social impact game projects and to assist in the process of selecting qualified game developers and designers to bid on projects.  The organization is currently working with USAID, the government agency providing US economic and humanitarian assistance worldwide for more than 40 years, and Pulitzer-prize winning The New York Times columnist Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn in bringing their best-selling book Half the Sky and its growing movement to emancipate women to a mass audience using the popularity of video games.

Learn more about Asi Burak and Michelle Byrd at: www.gamesforchange.org/staff
Learn more about Games for Change at: www.gamesforchange.org/ourwork

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Notes from G4C + G4LI’s Games for Learning Research and Design Innovation Day

Posted by Hsing Wei on 05-27-10

Games for Change moved a few blocks downtown to NYU to round out this year’s festival with another new event, Games for Learning: Research and Design Innovation, a day long series of panels and talks hosted in partnership with the Games for Learning Institute.  The day even acquired its own motto, thanks to UCLA’s Greg Chung, whose quip, “hope is not a strategy” bore frequent repeating by both subsequent speakers and audience members. Among the key questions posed throughout the day:
• How do we best determine good game design: through research, or game design itself?
• How do we know when game players have learned, and how do we design for it?
• When designing games, how do we best understand who the audience is and what their learning goals are?
• How do we design for the learning or challenge curve that represents the spectrum of target game players’ abilities and knowledge?
• How is learning transferred from in-game knowledge to real-world application?

Games for Change Executive Director Alex Quinn opened the day with an astute introduction that when we think about games for change, including within the advocacy and outreach work of nonprofits, the most fundamental catalyst for change is education and learning. He handed over the podium to G4LI’s Ken Perlin, who noted that the institute represents fourteen faculty across nine institutions and many disciplines, all with the common goal of trying to understand how to design games so that they can be assessed. Perlin, in turn, introduced the morning keynote, Department of Education Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and Improvement James H. Shelton III.

Shelton began by addressing misperceptions in education before moving onto address what he considers to be the major barriers to reform. Shelton disagrees with the common belief that the US education system is falling behind the rest of the world, and feels that the reality is that the US is being passed by, because its system has remained stagnant. He also argued that, when it comes to policy and funding decisions, our education systems fail to recognize that learning happens all the time and focuses too much on “seat time” and the standard six hours of the school day.  He asked the audience to consider how we change our attitude toward the types of learning opportunities we can create, as well as how to change the institutions that provide formal learning opportunities. Shelton focused his talk on the idea that the research and development cycle in education is broken: only .1% of annual spending (in what should be one of the most strategic industries in the country) the education sector goes to R&D.  He suggested that a future R&D agenda for education might be driven around questions like:
• What do we know about how people learn?
• What do people need to learn?
• How do we figure out what people know?
• What are the technologies to support this?

The first morning panel offered three presentations on “Research Innovations” about:
• motivation and game-based learning
• instructional effectiveness of games
• the learning outcomes of playing action-oriented video games

Richard Wainess of UCLA/CRESST began by dispelling the common viewpoint that motivation directly leads to learning, which furthers a flawed assumption that because games can be motivating, they are necessarily good for learning.  Wainess explained that motivation is a moderator (i.e.,without motivation, people are unlikely to learn) that explains the relationship between learning and achievement (as do other factors like expectancy, self-belief, value, and goal orientation). Wainess shared his proposed model, focusing on both potentially positive and negative constructs that might impact learning outcomes, as well as the role of instructional strategies and learning goal orientations. In describing the model, he made several notable points for educational game design:
• manage for the U-shaped curve of challenge and complexity: people don’t want to invest their time in things that appear to be either too easy or too hard
• part of the goal of learning is to store knowledge in a way that is retrievable when it matters
• engagement does not equal learning: wanting to play a game again is not an indicator of learning

Sigmund Tobias of the University at Albany, SUNY and JD Fletcher of the Institute for Defense Analyses presented next, asking as their key questions:
• do games enhance players’ capabilities in non-game environments?
• do people learn from games?
• do people do their jobs better as a function of what they have learned?
• how do we produce transfer?

Tobias and Fletcher aimed to answer these through a review of the research, in which they found that the similarity in cognitive processes in the game and in the real-world context are the key to producing learning transfer, as well as that the cognitive load during game play should be managed, ideally by instructor guidance. Tobias and Fletcher concluded with a proposed series of educational game design recommendations based on the research:
• design/buy games with overlap of cognitive and psychomotor processes in task and game
• give guidance for those who want it
• follow multimedia and cognitive load findings
• the game should include personalization, first person, human voices, and animated agents
• reduce seductive details
• reduce aggression, increase pro social content
• integrate with curriculum
• have a game development team

Third, Daphne Bavelier of the Rochester Center for Brain Imaging addressed questions around transfer with her findings that individuals who play fast-paced action games exhibit superior performance on many tasks compared to their non-game playing peers. Bavelier argued that everyone can learn, but skilled performance/expertise does not automatically mean the learning is transferable; likewise, not all games are created equal, so it is not possible to generalize about the effect of games on learning. However, action video games have an unprecedented transfer of learning. Bavelier and her team found that action games lead to improvements in both visual resolution (the ability to see small details amid visual clutter) and visual contrast sensitivity.  Her team is now using techniques to treat amblyopia in children. They are also testing the hypothesis that action video games help players learn to learn, how to better allocate resources as a function of task demand and adapt. Bavelier believes these findings have practical applications for rehabilitation, cognitive aging, math skills, and workforce training for professions such as surgeons, pilots, and military personnel. Her conclusion was that, if you embed the right kind of content in a game with the right kind of permissive factors, you can improve brain development and learning.

As respondents, Marc Prensky and Kurt Squire each suggested that the research conversation on games and learning needs to shift entirely. Prensky pleaded that we stop studying whether games are good for learning and begin to make more games, saying that “it’s a terrible situation when we have more conferences about good learning games than good learning games themselves.”  Squire suggested that we need to have a more honest conversation about what good and bad games look like, and that the change we seek in creating learning games must be more revolutionary than just fitting games into the current dominant model of school.

The pace picked up in the next session with a round of mini-talks from four academic researchers. Katherine Isbister of NYU-Poly joked that Prensky had stolen her presentation, which argued that game developers don’t publish research about what they do because they are too busy making games. Isbister described her project in which her team interviewed professional game developers about design to elicit best practices.  Isbister is now using those key concepts to set design values and rubrics for mini games her lab is creating. She argued that the games and learning community has not done enough to bring professional game developers into the process of designing educational games, nor to understand the rigor they bring to their practice. Katie Culp of the Center for Children and Technology focused on the disconnect between game designers and their target audiences, describing their process of creating a game to help middle grades students build critical thinking and analytical skills. Culp advised bringing content to your target audience, talk to them about it, and bring the findings to bear on the game production process. She argued that although this research may not bring anything new to the academy, it will answer questions for the production team and improve the iteration process. Greg Chung of UCLA CRESST, in addition to popularizing the phrase “hope is not a strategy,” posed questions about game log data and how this information can be used to study kids’ game play and how well they are understanding math concepts presented in the game. Finally, Jan Plass of the Games for Learning Institute described his study of design patterns for effective learning games, with a focus on STEM, and a model he has developed for measuring behavioral, cognitive, social, and emotional engagement.

The morning concluded with a riveting keynote from Jaron Lanier of Microsoft Research, who talked about the future of technology and learning in terms of the cognitive potential in haptic feedback. Lanier noted the success of the Wii as a breakthrough in the integration of continuous motion sensing in games, as well as the forthcoming Natal, which will measure the whole movement of the body in a non-intrusive way in a gaming environment. He compared “the magic of haptics” to how one improvises at the piano: going from having to actively think about each action to internalizing and then experientially understanding how to solve each problem or task. For Lanier, the great hope for computers is that they will improve our acuity with thinking. In terms of games for learning, if we can avoid the crucial trap of making a game that is a fantasy instead of one that connects to an empirical reality, we have the potential to raise the level of human cognition. He urged the community to work toward achieving parity between commercial and educational games in the minds of students. And he reminded the audience that the only way to think about the costs involved in the future of computing and education is in terms of the people, not the machines.

Much of the audience brought their lunch back to the auditorium for a Q&A session with Assistant Deputy Secretary Shelton, following up on his morning keynote. He answered questions on global competitiveness and reiterated his earlier statement that education budget challenges are here to stay, regardless of the overall economy. Expanding on his points about the need for improved research and development in education, Shelton suggested we need a DARPA for education and to create better conditions for innovation in the education sector, coming from both public and private partners. He reminded the audience that the federal government cannot dictate standards of assessment to the states, but can support states doing great work, so he would like to see seeds of innovation develop at the local level, and once they percolate up, have the federal government support bringing best practices to scale.

Following lunch was the third keynote of the day from Alan Kay, who connected remotely via Skype. He recalled his first realization in the 1960s, after meeting Seymour Papert, that kids could learn not just by playing video games, but by creating them. Kay remembered his original vision of computers having the potential for being wheels for the mind, as opposed to the internet and technology being used primarily to admire our own reflections.  He presented that anthropologists have identified about 300 human universals across all cultures; the non-universals include progress, reading & writing, deductive abstract math, equal rights, democracy, slow deep thinking, perspective drawing, and agriculture. Kay argued that school seems to have been invented to deal with these non-universals, which are harder to learn because we’re not deeply wired for them. However, most games are best at touching on the universals, and even games intended for learning don’t fully get at the non-universals well. He questioned the level of distraction produced by video game play, and suggested that games like Guitar Hero do not produce a transfer of learning to their related real-world domain. Kay did cite two games, Rocky’s Boots and Robot Odyssey, as great examples of educational games.

The afternoon panel shifted focus from research to design innovation, with presentations considering:
• how to embed assessment within a game
• what types of evidence indicate learning for the purposes of assessment
• the challenges and constraints presented by the various perspectives on the design team for an educational game

Kurt Squire returned to the podium to discuss assessment in the context of a new game in development, Citizen Science, that aims to increase scientific civic literacy in the following ways:
• conceptual understanding of the science
• understanding discourse
• proclivity to participate
Squire described the game, which is more about being a concerned citizen than a professional scientist, as having elements of liminology, activism, and video game literacy. In discussing the limitations in game assessments, Squire noted that if you only assess in-game play, you may miss the evidence of learning found in players’ real world actions. Squire posed a hypothetical conversation between possible members of a design team, such as a measurement specialist, performance assessor, learning scientist, game designer, and critical educator, to show the range of perspectives on what assessment looks like and how it can constrain game play. Squire concluded with the idea that assessment might occur among players themselves, as it often does in multiplayer games, and that there should be an “assessment bill of rights” in which the player has the right to offer his or her own goals and counter-evidence of achievement.

Cornelia Brunner of the Center for Children and Technology presented next on the idea of instructional game design, or what she defined as the sweet spot between pedagogy, medium, domain, age, and school. Brunner put forth a decidedly pragmatic approach to educational game design, stating that some classrooms need games that do nothing more dramatic than the kind of teaching already happening. She suggested that the role of the instructional designer is to figure out how to take advantage of the medium and pull together the various interests and foci of the domain to support existing teaching and learning.

The final presenter of the panel was Brian Nelson, speaking about his work in immersive virtual worlds and on the 21st Century Assessment Project to develop new approaches and tools for assessment supported by immersive games. Nelson explained that his research seeks a theory-based way to design activities and tasks that kids can do that will provide evidence from which you can infer something about what those kids are learning. He has been studying game quest types as assessment tasks, such as delivery, cooperation, collection, assembly, and chains. Nelson has developed a model of understanding actions and quests in virtual worlds as “global evidence channels”, and gave a demo of his work in which students’ actions in a virtual world are intended to reinforce science concepts recently presented in the classroom.

Eric Zimmerman and Tracy Fullerton served as respondents to the design innovation presentations. Fullerton shared a self-assessment of her work as a game designer on educational games, saying that her abilities as a game designer decrease because she is not free to think as creatively as possible, but her knowledge of domains, and of teachers and kids, have increased dramatically during such projects.  Zimmerman offered the idea that we should understand games as a more participatory cultural activity than art, architecture, or even reading a book or listening to music. He also commented that the challenge of a designer in a content realm is to design learning content and game play together thoughtfully.

During a second set of minitalks, keeping with the theme of design innovation, the audience heard from Miguel Nussbaum of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile on his work around games and curricular complexity.  Marjee Chmiel and Nina Walia introduced games designed to transcend generational divides. Chmiel presented strategies for gradually integrating games in the classroom so teachers have time to build their instructional proficiency with them, while Walia introduced the concept of the passback effect: when a parent hands off a device to a kid to distract them (a term that applies to 2-5 year olds without their own mobile devices). In her work at PBS Kids, Walia is creating games that help kids learn in these contexts, a crucial component of which is content that is both engaging AND quiet (appeals to both kids and adults).  She also shared research on which PBS Kids games are designed. Doug Clark of Vanderbilt University presented SURGE (Scaffolding Understanding through Research on Games for Education), in which the initial design principles were to overlay popular gameplay mechanics with key formal physics representations, using specific challenges. Clark described trying to encourage articulation to make ideas and connections more explicit.  He also raised the question from the morning about the U-shaped curve, asking how to keep the challenge curve wide enough to support the breadth of players in a classroom setting. Tobi Saulnier of 1st Playable Productions introduced her work with handheld games for kids, mostly designed for Nintendo DS, including Club Penguin. Saulnier described her design team’s approach to the learning curve, both in terms of the game itself and the content. She referred to the stage of “conscious incompetence” as the “unfun” part, and so it is important to think about audience and how to scaffold play style to get them to unconscious competence quickly. Victoria Van Voorhis of Second Avenue Software presented her company’s work on STEM-focused software.  Using Porter’s Five Forces, she highlighted challenges due to constraints on innovation and competitiveness in the educational software market: the powerfully large existing suppliers, the ubiquity of substitute products, the fragmentation of buyers, and the bargaining power of customers make very high barriers to entry for independent content providers.

The day ended with a fourth keynote, which Games for Change Board Chairman Alan Gershenfeld introduced with the reminder that it wasn’t a given that Sesame Street would be a phenomenon; it was a revolutionary concept and it took all kinds to make it what it came to be.  Michael Levine, Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center began his talk with a video of Muppets in a smoke-filled room fighting over what to call “Sesame Street”. Levine recalled that “Sesame Street”—now the most studied property in the history of children’s media—was both on the cover of Time Magazine and banned in Mississippi within the first six months of its premiere, reminding the audience that we should think about the mental and developmental routes of the children’s media movement as we look toward its future. Levine described the work of the Cooney Center, which focuses on middle childhood (5-11 year olds), studying old and new literacies, underserved populations, and learning ecologies across formal and informal settings. He outlined several of their current key research questions:
• how can intergenerational play be intentionally designed and promoted during game play?
• what behaviors are associated with intergenerational game play?
• Which player dynamics attract both parents and children to play?
• Which platforms and play mechanics best support intergenerational engagement?

He also advised researchers to craft studies that investigate the potential of games to address current key policy issues:
• engaging parents in scaffolding their kids’ learning
• personalizing early literacy development
• promoting healthy eating and exercise habits
• inspiring kids to engage in scientific inquiry
• supporting learners with special needs

Finally, he shared how the Joan Ganz Cooney Center is taking a role in sparking more entrepreneurship in this space.  Their Cooney Prizes identify and rewards innovations in children’s learning.  Levin closed by saying that the one thing that hasn’t changed in the forty years since the creation of “Sesame Street” is that kids are still relying on us to solve the problems that we will leave behind for them to clean up.

By Emily Kornblut

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G4C Festival: Day 2 Notes

Posted by Hsing Wei on 05-26-10

In addition to the themes and trends of the previous two days of the festival, several new ideas emerged today, in particular:
• games’ potential to better prepare citizens for participation in all facets of civic life: school, work, the military, community
• the need remains to fully understand the connection between game play and game structures and the opportunities for real-world action
• in our quest to engage people with learning and civic participation, call upon the power of narrative that has been successful in other media, and use multiple media to expand on those storylines

Connie Yowell of the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning initiative introduced the morning keynote, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Building on yesterday’s conversation about the intersection of government and games, Justice O’Connor talked about the urgent need for citizens to learn about the governmental system before they can participate.  This need was her impetus for creating the iCivics project.  Targeted to middle school students, the first game created by the project focused on the judicial branch, and has expanded to games on the executive and legislative branches.  Only half the states in the US require civics and government credits to graduate high school, and at the middle school level, only three states include a separate civics course in their standards. Justice O’Connor asked, “how do you participate in a system you don’t understand?”  Justice O’Connor reminded the audience that much of this system’s original purpose was to enable citizens to learn the skills and knowledge of self-governance. She admitted that at first she was skeptical of games, but now she believes students have to learn civics not just by reading, but by doing, and that iCivics is a practical tool for just that.

Justice O’Connor’s keynote was followed by another set of fascinating talks on the future of digital media. Kurt Squire, professor and the co-founder of Games, Learning, and Society presented his research on mobile learning environments, arguing that digital media is going to bring schools into the 21st century (which is already 10 percent over) whether they like it or not.  His initiative put a mobile device in the hands of every student. Squire reported that they found surprisingly little classroom disruption, and that kids reported many more pro-social uses of phones than researchers expected.  Moreover, the integration of mobile devices in school resulted in amplification of interest, self, social networks, and learning.

Squire described a neighborhood game design project that took place in three stages:
1) play space inquiry/citizen journalism, which used a place-based inquiry approach to identifying city planning challenges.
2) game design in a studio context, which cultivates the professional process and practice of game development.
3) a collaboratively designed augmented reality game in which the students created their own augmented reality game around a community issue that deeply impacted their lives.

Squire believes games fit well with mobile devices in learning because they are the best instantiation of situated learning theory. As one student reflected on his experience creating a game, “I forgot that I was in school.” Squire pointed out that the great opportunity of mobile learning is not just being anytime/anywhere, but that it can also be very specifically rooted in a particular place and time. He then shared several examples of other games and projects:
• ARIS
• Dow Day: a place-based history game about the riots in Madison, WI in 1967
• Lake Wingra environmental science game
• Albuquerque: a Spanish language and culture game

Squire concluded with two key themes:
1) The process of going from a user to a designer is like a model of community organizing: achieving competency, identifying exploits, changing rules, identifying superior strategies, inventing rule systems, and ultimately community organizing. This makes games a mechanism to participate in the world—as you become competent you want to do something about what you see happening around you. 
2) With mobile devices, we can take kids out of the walls we’ve put up around them that currently keep them from participating.

For those interested in learning more about mobile games and learning, Squire suggested attending the day long workship at the Games, Learning, and Society Conference in June.

Up next was Ken Perlin, the co-director of the Games for Learning Institute at NYU.  Perlin observed that we currently pigeon holing young people (and adults), first into specific school seats and then into professional identities like scientist, artist, engineer, designer (and encourage them to consort with only their own kind).  Perlin believes these characteristics (analytic vs aesthetic and exploration vs. implementation) exist in everyone, and his hope for the future is to cultivate each attribute in each young person. Perlin touched on the relationship between books—which he called windows into multiple worlds—and the future of digital media.  He imagined intelligent books that will recognize readers across devices. Perlin passionately argued that the devices will fade into the background to play a role that supports people, rather than takes up people. He connected the recurring theme of transmedia and narratives, pointing out that if you create a compelling character of any sort, transmedia will form around it, be it Kermit the Frog or Sarah Palin. Perlin closed by discussing his own work in R&D, reminding us of Alan Kay’s statement that “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

The last of this year’s nine “future” talks came from a perspective less familiar to the Games for Change community. Army Brigadier General Loree K. Sutton, the highest ranking psychiatrist in the military, put the future in the context of the next Greatest Generation.  She asked how video games and the people in the auditorium could address the “unseen wounds” of war, the widespread mental health issues and brain injuries in the military community.  BG Sutton stated that we have a challenge when less than 1% of our citizenry knows what it means to wear the military uniform; although we may be separated by whether we wear the uniform and where we fall on the political spectrum, we are all connected by every wound of war that is inflicted on our behalf. She argued that this health crisis is not only medical and that “we cannot treat our way out of this challenge” to get members of the military from recovery to resilience. She also suggested that the most critical imperative is a cultural transformation from a “suck it up” or pathological approach to mental health to a community-based, public health one. BG Sutton went on to explain the role that games and other media are playing in her work to achieve this shift, including the creation of America’s Army, a collaboration with Sesame Workshop, and Theater of War.  BG Sutton explained that her goal is to use games and other immersive learning experiences to engage soldiers’ hearts, minds, and spirits. Her colleague, Captain Russell Shilling, added that destigmatizing these issues among the general public is as important, if not more, than doing so within the military itself.  The goals of their game initiatives are psychological health education, traversing the complex bureaucracy soldiers face, destigmatizing mental health issues, and teaching soldiers how to recognize mental health issues in others.

In response to a question about the impact of war games on the general population, BG Sutton said she is greatly disturbed by how compelling war games are in their ability to do things like draw a player into commiting war crimes, but sees an opportunity to take the war-wounded characters and construct games around them in a more hopeful, positive way. She is also concerned about the use of commercial video games in the military recruiting process for the way it sends the message that killing is the point of serving as a warrior, when in fact it’s about a set of values and an ethos. BG Sutton suggested that we need games in the recruiting process that cultivate resiliency as well as the military’s values.

The last panel of the morning gave the audience insights into the perspectives of grantmakers who fund gaming projects. Michael Levine, Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, moderated the panel around four key questions:
• how are games part of funding strategy?
• what are funders’ expectations around success metrics and evaluation?
• what is on the horizon for funding games?
• examples of double bottom line and public-private partnerships?

Connie Yowell of the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning initiative explained that their motivation for funding games is rooted in the shift in understanding learning from a model of consumption to one of participation and production that is fundamentally social. She believes games are at the core of this, and that the paradigm shift has been so big that as a foundation they have stepped away from evaluation so that grantees have more freedom to think in new and creative ways. Although MacArthur is starting to initiate public-private partnerships, Yowell is concerned that they may pull thinking back toward old paradigms. Nonetheless, she hoped for larger game platforms to start opening up for independent and social issue developers, greater interest in design experimentation, more research in the study of pathways and trajectories of kids’ gameplay, and game companies partnering with learning scientists to understand the next generation of learners.  A major finding of projects they have funded is that kids are doing amazing things online, and there are few adults attending to it, so there is a huge need for mentoring in the social networking space and for research on child-adult co-participation online.

Robert Torres of The Gates Foundation, and self-described product of MacArthur Foundation funding on digital media and learning, said that this involvement is now informing his work at Gates.  The Gates Foundation’s has two main funding initiatives: implementation of the new common core and the creation of formative assessments. In considering funding of the tools that might cultivate these two areas, Torres envisions among the possible criteria:
• degrees to which learning environments create communities of practice for kids
• degrees to which kids are producing content endemic to the domain in which they are learning
• how kids set the standards within their own communities of practice to drive the production of content

Tessie Topol represented Time Warner Cable’s philanthropic initiatives, which do not have a specific gaming strategy, but are focused on STEM through their Connect A Million Minds program.  The initiative supported the development of the Connectory, a searchable database of afterschool STEM opportunities targeted to parents, and also supports First Robotics. Topol outlined the goals of their funding to be:
• increased awareness of the initiative
• the creation of consumer friendly content related to after-school STEM
• the ability to leverage popular social networks to encourage dialogue around these issues
The initiative’s next step is to gather input on how gaming can make after-school STEM more accessible to kids who don’t have the time, money, or access to participate in traditional/hands-on opportunities.

Finally, Christine Adamczyk of USAID spoke about the ways that games can be another tool in the arsenal to move toward development goals across the many sectors in which USAID works. She announced that USAID is in the concept stage of developing a gaming initiative, both the creation of new games and the adaptation of existing games. She pointed out that, although they are interested in digital games, in some settings where they work, board and card games are more appropriate because of access issues. She identified their key challenges as:
• bureaucratic: the government’s required emphasis on evaluation and outcomes
• leadership: educating agency leaders that “gaming” does not mean going to Las Vegas
• access: electricity and Internet
• cultural applications and adaptations

Responding to the question of how funders receive new ideas from prospective grantees, Topol said that Time Warner Cable uses a centralized application process, but is also interested in partnership more than just cutting a check to an organization. Yowell suggested MacArthur’s annual digital media and learning competition as the best way to get involved, but that they also try to announce new grantmaking criteria through their Spotlight blog; and Torres said that the Gates Foundation is still in the process of developing formal structures for this purpose.

Several optional gatherings convened over lunch, including a game demo representing Games for Change meeting the games industry as well as a conversation about games and assessment.

The panel that convened after lunch was described by moderator Ben Stokes as several years in the making; when the idea of a direct action games panel was first proposed, it was felt that the event wasn’t ready for it. The panel posed questions about the reality and theory of extending games into “real” world action like donating, volunteering, or protesting. Tracy Fullerton of USC started off by saying that games are usually safe practice spaces to take actions that one might not actually want to take in the real world.  Which Stephen Duncombe of NYU countered with an opposing limitation: if all the good intentions of an impact game stay within the game and are not transferred into the real world. Duncombe added that often the tried and true techniques of direct action (petitions, rallies, and canvassing) aren’t very much fun, and some aren’t very efficacious. In fact, Duncombe argued that often direct action reaffirms the status quo instead of advancing social change, such as demonstrations against the Iraq War that legitimized it as being a real war. Together, the panel presented a grid with two axes as a way of thinking about where several examples sit on the spectra of motivations (in-game outcomes or rewards vs. social or civic outcomes) and actions (in-game rehearsals for the future vs. real world and immediate).  And discussed where various games sat on this grid:
• Girl Scouts: real world actions, motivated by game-like challenges and rewards that cover a range of social, civic, artistic, and technical skills
• Grand Theft Auto: game actions that have no direct real world implications
• Critical Mass: in-game actions that take place in the real world, motivated by both in game rewards and social outcomes
• Urgent Evoke: real world actions, motivated by game-like challenges that cover a range of social, economic, and environmental issues
• A Force More Powerful: a simulation like America’s Army, but it’s unclear how to translate the game experience into real world action
• Rosario Habitat: game actions as rehearsal for real world actions, motivations are civic outcomes, and the mechanics of games are used to rehearse people for real world actions
• InterroBANG: real world actions, motivated by in-game actions

Fullerton and Duncombe concluded that there are games trying for the intersection of in-game rewards with real-world actions, but not as many in this space as they would like to see. Duncombe suggested that transformed consciousness is also a valuable real world outcome; play, art, and games can help you see the world from a different perspective. Although there aren’t discernable short term metrics of success from this, it still leads to social change on a different level. The panel concluded with questions about what it means for a game to be democratic. Duncombe pointed out that democratic games aren’t just games that reward democracy, but those that are constructed democratically, as opposed to being predetermined by a game designer with an invisible framework.

Next, in another new session format for Games for Change, Ty Ahmad-Taylor, creator of Fanfeedr, kicked off a series of minitalks, or Ignite-style, five minute presentations in which the speaker’s slides automatically advance every fifteen seconds. Here are the rundowns of these rapid-fire big ideas.

Patrick Meier of Ushahidi
• Ushahidi was originally a Kenyan initiative, launched during post-election violence, that enabled crisis mapping in which anyone in Kenya could report human rights abuses via SMS
• The platform is an aggregator with information displayed geographically, combing a vast information ecosystem for anything that can be mapped related to a crisis
• Ushahidi is now being used for the BP oil spill
• Its highest profile deployment was for post-earthquake rescue operations in Haiti
• 30% of Haitian population has a cell phone, so the disaster affected population could text what they needed, what they were experiencing, and the data was translated from Creole through a crowd sourced process
• Meier posed two questions: 1) can we apply mechanical turk services to crowd sourcing crises? 2)can we embed human intelligence tasks into multiplayer games to address crises?

Richard Lemarchand, Lead Designer at Naughty Dog”
• eagerly awaiting the Charles Dickens of video games; it’s debatable how much change Dickens’s stories led to directly, but they created an environment for discussion and debate about social and political change
• There are now similar opportunities to use games to set the stage for change
• Many designers now are looking at how the systems of games produce cognitive or emotional effects
• The key to good storytelling design is to align ebb and flow of game play with the narrative
• We have a need for collaboration between storytellers across different media

Jessica Hammer
• People have a social desirability bias: they lie so they can say what they think is socially acceptable
• When they do this, people are engaging with their “inner book of etiquette” and larger social forces (answering a question a certain way, making certain choices during game play), rather than doing what you want them to do
• If your game play basically boils down to telling people what to do, they’re going to do what they think you expect
• Look for problems that people can’t solve with their inner “Miss Manners” so they are making an authentic decision

Suzanna Samstag
• Games have always been part of Korean culture: the verbs for to play and to perform were originally interchangeable in Korean
• Games are a huge part of the Korean economy, educational system
• She created a social issue game building camp for 5th and 6th graders last summer
• The campers created highly sophisticated game structures on topics such as CO2 reduction and home energy conservation
• She is now developing a game on the DMZ for elementary school students

Jane Pinkard of Foundation 9 Entertainment”
• Exploring love as a central narrative theme in games: games for emotional change
• What does the player do, and how does the player feel?
• Love is linked to play
• Players have formed emotional attachments in games: Final Fantasy 8, Nintendogs
• Tips for designers on a great “first date” in a videogame: have a sense of humor, make use of adrenaline-filled moments, let the player express herself, allow for vulnerability, the object of my affection is unique, and remember that love is a battlefield

Ntiedo Etuk of Tabula Digita
• The company’s goal is to make learning and educational achievement a lifestyle
• They are trying to understand changes in media use and psychology
• 90% of educators who have used them would recommend the games to their peers
• The games are being adopted by districts and states
• Despite criticism, they use multiple choice questions because teachers are comfortable with that format
• Their formula is increased engagement leading to increased achievement by meeting students where they are and making education more personalized

Brian Reich of Little M Media
• “Why?” is where the impact is
• We need a fundamental shift in the way we engage audiences
• We need better audience profiles to know what people do in their lives besides playing games
• We have to care about the non-serious games and why people play them
• We need to understand all platforms because people are engaging with multiple platforms simultaneously
• We need new models of making money in the context of how all industries are struggling for financial sustainability
• We need to redefine success because we don’t understand behavior shift well enough

Rob Dubbin of “The Colbert Report”
• Dubbin first told a ghost story, using his iPad as a campfire
• Aphorisms and game design are both constraints on reality
• Any aphorism can suggest a game design
• Use storytelling because a story doesn’t care if you succeed or fail
• Seeking feedback on his simulation: Fish

The last panel of the festival, moderated by Games for Change Executive Director Alex Quinn, distilled Monday’s Youth-Created Games workshop into a panel presentation. Betty Hayes of Tech Savvy Girls at Arizona State University summarized the following key points:
• game design is complex
• many youth game design programs started with a narrow focus, such as STEM or girls/technology
• should the focus of youth game design be on the technology, or on design?
• game design is being implemented in several frameworks: 1) game design and learning as educational equity, 2) game design as the transformation of learning itself, and 3) game design as raising awareness of social issues

Barry Joseph of Global Kids’ Online Leadership Program reflected on the way in which Games for Change brings together a range of subcommunities. Joseph reviewed the workshop by taking the audience on a tour of the tweets throughout the day on Monday, drawing out key insights from the participants. Colleen Macklin of PETLab took a similar approach by making a tag cloud of the tweets from the workshop. She pulled out several concepts—STEM vs. STEAM (should art be included in this skill set?), as well as the importance of skills, modding, and kids themselves to the youth game design process. Alex Quinn observed efforts to create sustainable business models for youth game design programs, as both Globaloria and Global Kids have done, as well as the question of whether the intersection of STEM and gaming is in the content of the games or in the design process experience.

This year’s festival closed with a keynote conversation between Games for Change Board chairman Alan Gershenfeld and Neal Baer, the Executive Producer of “Law & Order: SVU” and “ER.” Baer described his extensive educational journey, from graduate school in education to film school to medical school. It was during medical school that Baer first read Michael Crichton’s script for “ER”—he took it up because he felt that it accurately represented his experience as a resident (upon which much of Noah Wylie’s character was based). Baer attributed the success of both shows to being so story driven, even though they engage in complex and often technical or provocative topics. Baer encouraged game designers to take this cue from television drama and let characters be a key entry point into complex social issues and different perspectives. His strategy has been to run the social issues through the characters, in order to show differing and conflicting opinions as characters work through the issues from their respective points of view. Gershenfeld pointed out that many impact games have an obvious right and wrong choice, and Baer responded by saying that, again, game design can learn from narrative drama about making the outcomes of those choices more ambiguous, and thus the decisions more meaningful. Baer also acknowledged the importance of being aware of one’s perspective and bias, but not letting that overly influence the perspective of the narrative. Baer furthered the overall discussion of transmedia by sharing a project in which he expanded a “Law & Order: SVU” storyline related to rape in Congo by partnering with a range of organizations and influencers, such as Take Part, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, The Huffington Post, and Human Rights Watch. This coalition translated into over a million tweets about the episode and the issue, as well as landing pages on partner sites outlining actions that people can take on the issue. In this sense, Baer said he feels that he’s like a gamer, wanting to extend television stories beyond what he can do with traditional media and take advantage of transmedia opportunities. Baer left the audience with a final word of advice that applies across all media: take responsibility to be as accurate as possible when embedding social issues into games, because people do actually learn something from that interaction (be it playing, watching, reading), whether they realize it at the time or not.

By Emily Kornblut

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Opening of G4C Festival 2010

Posted by Hsing Wei on 05-26-10

[This year’s official hashtag is #g4cfest10, for those who want to share or catch up via Twitter.  We also have a few “Twambassadors” sharing what they notice throughout the festival on a g4c Twitter List.]

Games for Change board chairman Alan Gershenfeld introduced the festival with a nod to the shift from whether we should leverage games as a platform to how to leverage games as a platform for social change. Gershenfeld noted several new trends at this year’s event:
• as “bits cross borders seamlessly,” there is more international focus than in previous years
• a greater focus on games and learning, reflected in yesterday’s workshop on youth as game makers
• transmedia: the marriage of film, games, comics, mobile, and questions of the interplay between linear and interactive media
• the increased intersection of government and games

Aneesh Chopra, the surprisingly funny White House Chief Technology Officer, delivered the morning keynote. Chopra focused on the way the administration is using technology to change the way citizens interact with their government, moving from “there’s a form for that” to “there’s an app for that” to create a new results-oriented government. Chopra asked how government can tap into the creativity and entrepreneurship of the American people to cultivate new kinds of interaction with government data and inspire people to make a difference. He shared numerous examples of how the administration is working to fulfull its core principles—prioritization, transparency, engagement, and rapid results—through digital media:
• A USDA competition offering $60,000 in prizes for winning apps related to healthy nutrition for kids in two categories - ideas that take advantage of data sets geared toward parents, and those geared toward students.
• Through a public-private partnership, Text for Baby, a mobile health app that enables women to receive maternal health information by text message. There are now over 40,000 subscribers and the app is available in Spanish and English.
• Supporting programs like Case Western Reserve University’s development of community as learning lab programs, an example of how universities can extend their capabilities into the development of infrastructure.
• Health and Human Services released over 2000 datasets that describe communities’ health performance, and volunteers have since developed Community Clash, an interactive card game to help people understand community health data.
• Data.gov puts the data in citizens hands so they can do with it what they need.
• -i6 Challenge is a competition to find six community based approaches to commercialize university research and create ecosystems that can bring ideas from campuses into the commercial sector.
• The DARPA balloon challenge tapped into the power of networks: the winning team used an innovative, tiered incentive model to spur citizen participation in the project. Since then, one of the team members transferred the model to address the hunger crisis.
• Healthcare Virtual Career Platform: currently developing the infrastructure for an open platform for providing learning materials that help people train/retrain for growth jobs in the healthcare industry.

In response to an audience question about equity in access to technology and what government is doing to address the necessary culture shift in low access communities, Chopra suggested a need to learn from the innovation of frugal engineering principles, and the administration’s “relentless focus on listening” to the needs of local communities. He also addressed an education question by commenting that we live in a world of SM and ET, not STEM, because engineering and technology are ill-defined in our education system. Giving an example from his work as CTO of Virginia, Chopra said that, in trying to spur innovation that increases engineering and technology education, in many cases these programs inadvertently integrated the arts as well. Chopra closed his presentation by announcing the winners of the Digital Media and Learning Game Changers competition.

The panel that followed built on this discussion of the intersection of games and the public interest, responding to the question of whether, like radio and television, the time has come for National Public Games. Three common ideas emerged across the speakers’ varied perspectives:
• like radio and television, the case for gaming in the public interest needs to be well documented, researched, and advocated for
• mobile technology expands the possibilities for public gaming
• private-public partnerships have great potential to advance the field

Bill Siemering, one of the creators of NPR’s “All Things Considered” shared the history of public radio’s founding, noting that radio and games have shared missions. Siemering described public radio’s origins as a scattering seeds across hard-to-reach areas of the country, becoming a place to learn and growing over time from an archipelago of college radio stations to the most distinguished format of radio. Nonetheless, he cautioned the audience that opposition is to be expected; when the idea of public radio came up for funding, there was a fear that it would dilute the impact of public television. He also mentioned his current work with Developing Radio to describe how mobile technology is expanding the interactivity of radio in places like Mozambique. PBS KIDS Interactive began her presentation with a clip of Mr. Rogers testifying before Congress. Dewitt pointed out that public television was a new model of how kids can learn, and now PBSKids.org and its games are developed with same process of education testing and focus on learning goals. Games are the #1 daily destination on PBSKids.org, a site that receives 9 million unique visitors per month and has successfully competed with Nickelodeon and Disney in the online game space, despite its public, non-commercial media budget. Dewitt added that PBSKids.org focuses not only on learning, but also helping kids learn how to interact socially online, and that their philosophy is that every new technology is an opportunity to teach. In line with Siemering’s note that documentation of success is essential, Dewitt announced a new research study that has found the PBS iPhone app for Martha Speaks research is showing improvements in vocabulary acquisition. Dewitt concluded that PBS Kids is looking ahead to the connection between games and the physical world, thanks to the learning opportunities afforded by mobile technology, and sees both further research and industry partners as keys to future success and innovation. Interestingly, she also mentioned that now some kids are first engaging with PBS online, not TV, and that content is going to be increasingly more transmedia, with users accessing it from different starting points.

As a member of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy team, Kumar Garg represented a different public sector perspective. Garg said that the White House is interested in gaming because it’s so deeply engaging and for its social collaborative nature. He posed several questions, such as:
• what convener role can the White House play to empower the game community?
• what is the potential for the mobile, anytime/anywhere capacity of games?
• how can we convene all the agencies who are interested in using games?
• how can we convert the agencies who are agnostic about games?
• what are we doing to ensure a pipeline of students who are makers and doers?

Garg sees the proliferation of low cost games and lower cost distribution as opportunities for niche game development, and hopes to see broader government involvement in the gaming space, building beyond the depth of innovation in gaming seen within the military and into areas such as healthcare and entrepreneurship. The final speaker, Laird Malamed of Nick Bilton, Clay Shirky, and Katie Salen gave short talks on the future of digital media, which, while diverse, all explored the role of data and information sharing.

Bilton spoke about both the classes he teaches at NYU and his work in research and development at The New York Times, where they have tried to use data to understand how to better engage site visitors. He showed how data are used to tell stories visually with a motion graphic of the US map, showing mobile and web visits to the site over the course of the day Michael Jackson died, and how the news spread. Bilton shared several ideas from his forthcoming book, I Live in the Future (and Here’s How it Works), particularly whether digital media is truly affecting our ability to multitask and concentrate. Bilton argues that there are limitations to multitasking, but it doesn’t mean we’re unable to switch between things at all; the way the brain switches between tasks depends on what the tasks are. He has also coined a term—technochondria—to describe a fear of new technology that goes as far back as the railway. Further supporting the first panel’s call for research, Bilton noted that existing research on gaming points to the opposite of people’s fears: studies show that playing games like Tetris increases attention and eye-hand coordination, and that laparoscopic surgeons who play video games are better surgeons. Bilton believes the inability to concentrate is not in the media themselves, but in the user interfaces and the volume of media we consume simultaneously. Nonetheless, our brains are adapting to the way we interact with new media, and he asserts that anyone who says our brains are not designed to play video games should consider that our brains are also not designed to read. Bilton suggested that digital media is also changing learning and our relationship with the news: now that more people are part of the news, there is greater social responsibility for it.

Clay Shirky also predicted the future through the lens of his new book, Cognitive Surplus, citing a study on primates that found that there is no such thing as sharing in itself: sharing of goods, information, and services are all three distinct behaviors. Using the example of Napster, Shirky believes that sharing in the digital world makes generosity easier because we’re required to give up less in order to share. He sees in this shift an opportunity to design around generosity, because humans have always been generous, and now digital media makes the radius and half-life of generosity much bigger. On the value of generosity and sharing, Shirky commented that the bar is raised when you put people into a collaborative setting (e.g., open source software) or when the combined utility of something is worth pooling resources. At the same time, he posed the question of dividing lines around sharing, giving the example of Apple, which built its rebirth around an open source operating system, but has the most closed, proprietary, albeit beautifully designed, device in the iPhone.

Katie Salen opened her talk about Quest to Learn, the school that she founded, by saying, “there is a lot of futureness all around us, how do we recognize that it’s here?” Q2L was created as a response to the need for schools to connect to the lives kids lead outside of school. Salen stated that the school’s design builds on the idea that games operate as incredible, pedagogical spaces. Salen walked the audience through a day in the life of Q2L students, demonstrating the emphasis on an ecology of learning spaces—examples of how digital media are used to connect students wherever they are, the use of data visualization for patterns of behavior and attitude, interdisciplinary learning around big ideas, and strong values of sharing and collaboration. She explained how the school addresses parental involvement—recognizing the risk parents are taking in sending their kids to a new school with new concepts—through tools such as podcasts. Salen also discussed the competencies based on state standards, systems thinking (21st century skills), and citizenship, and noted that all assessment is embedded in learning itself. She concluded with four tenets of the school’s design and practice:
• learning is rigorous but engaging
• games are used purposefully
• digital media are well integrated
• digital literacy is supported

During lunch, Frank Lantz and Karen Sideman continued their Games for Change tradition of the Frank Lantz and Karen Sideman show, this year with a new twist: the collective creation of a presentation by the audience, based on topics posted on slides, using a word association/found object approach. Lantz and Sideman would show a slide, then take “bids” from the audience to speak for two or three minutes on each of the following topics:
• The Different Types of Social Intelligence
• Play is the New Work
• An Important Thing People Need to Understand About Healthcare
• Educators and game designers…are both tasked with…how to create spaces that ultimately exist for people to do interesting things?
• McLuhan and games
• YouMedia
• What is the Singularity? (and why it won’t happen…or will it?)
• The act of observing determines what is observed
• Games, conflict, violence, and war
• What the Tea Party movement tells us about politics in America
• Fun is the original educational technology
• Sex, gender, and computation
• “It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, What matters is it’s out there” - Cokie Roberts
• The amazing truth about games and learning
• Dude, where’s my 21st century?
• What I want to change with my game

After lunch, Games for Change Executive Producer Asi Burak moderated a panel on developing mobile games in the developing world, which represented industry, academic, and nonprofit perspectives on the subject. While each speaker highlighted unique pilots of mobile games, they shared the message that the design of such games must center around the needs and cultural contexts of the target audience.

Subhi Quraishi of ZMQ, which has reached 64 million devices through their games in India and Africa, showed several games they have developed:
• Freedom HIV/AIDS project: a mobile health communication initiative that connected people living with HIV to the existing government health platform
• Africa Reach Program: 4 Java-based mobile games, created in local languages and with local NGO partners
• mobile games addressing domestic violence, based on existing TV daily soap opera episodes in Kenya
• a game to address indoor air pollution, due to the millions of deaths in India from kitchen smoke every year
Quraishi’s urged prospective mobile game designers to ask, what is the need of the people? Where are the gaps? And, how can we bridge to the country’s existing infrastructure?

Matthew Kam gave an overview of his research using mobile games to make education more accessible in countries where child labor is preventing kids from going to school. Working in India, their project’s human centered design process began with one hundred children, then two pilot programs. These pilots showed test score improvement, so it’s now critical to be able to scale. Kam noted that the instructional design drew from existing best practices on language learning/acquisition, but that at first their games were not intuitive to rural children because the games were highly Westernized. The researchers responded to this by studying game patterns and mechanics in traditional games played in villages and conducting a cross-cultural analysis in which they identified 37 non-trivial differences between western video games and traditional rural games. They have since prioritized creating and evaluating games not only as educational interventions but also to be culturally appropriate from the outset.

Prabhas Pokharel of Mobile Active, although cautious to say that there are widespread successes in mobile gaming in the developing world, echoed Quraishi and Kam’s message of needing to understand access and usage patterns, asking: are people sharing phones? do kids have access? ability/willingness to pay for games? Pokharel suggested that the impact is better demonstrated with a broader definition of mobile games/entertainment/media, and despite the limitations to mobile game development in these contexts, it’s important to leverage people’s comfort level with mobile interactivity and connectivity in general. Pokharel shared the example of Text for Change, a mobile HIV awareness and prevention game in Uganda. He also mentioned Fail Faire, an event that convened people who have developed mobile projects in the developing world to share and learn from failures.

For the afternoon session of talks on the Future of Digital Media, Jim Gee, Micah Sifry, and Clive Thompson sparked a lively debate about the future impact of digital media on government and civic participation. Gee’s somewhat dark prediction was based on the premise that there is no future to predict because of black swans, or things that are unpredictable, change everything. Gee argued that America has learned how to make a black swan happen quite predictably (credit default swaps) and none of those things could have happened without digital media. Gee predicted an end to public schools and widespread higher education system, a rise in virtual worlds and game playing, and the disappearance of national and cultural diversity. He concluded that there is a dangerous future that we need to work against by ensuring the next “black swan” is a good one. Sifry connected digital media, politics, and technology by saying that the two games we play every day are “government” and “news” and asked, what’s broken about them, and how can we fix it? He gave the example that we have an amazing piece of digital media in the live feed from BP of the oil spill, but that the website Congress put up for the live feed doesn’t work on most browsers. As Sfiry put it, we’re drowning in a gusher of real-time information and it’s a spectacle that comes at us from all sides, but we don’t have the action steps to respond and the institutions that mediate that process don’t think of us as capable of playing a role. Sifry also pointed out that, although the Obama administration is trying to make government more transparent, some of those efforts still feel very bureaucratic (like the EPA’s “submit a suggestion” for the oil spill). Sifry concluded his prediction by saying that the game of influencing government is already gamed by people with money, which needs to be fixed to open up the process of participation; digital media should be used not just to outrage us, but to move together to toward action. Finally, Clive Thompson made his predictions by posing the question: what will our first gamer president look like? Among his insights:
• gamers are good at uncovering hidden rules
• gamers who have played horror games understand scarcity, which legislators of the future will need to understand
• a gamer president would have no tolerance for the current lack of situational awareness in government
• grinding in gaming gives us a linear relationship between work and reward (“The American Dream”), a perspective the president should understand firsthand

The last panel of the day gave the audience advice on building a sustainable business model around making social issue games. Gobion Rowlands presented his business, whose goal is to make fun games that deal with the problems of 21st century society. Their game, Fate of the World, in which the player runs the world for 200 years, is designed to be provocative. Rowlands advised designers to think about how huge the gaming audience is, even when making a niche game. He outlined three main funding routes:
• foundations/government
• “traditional” game publishers
• angel/venture capital investment
Then suggested choosing your distribution (all are unique markets with their own competition and needs):
• free to play/casual
• commercial: online and boxed copy
• educational/schools
• corporate training
And finally, gave these points of marketing advice:
• Do PR, not marketing
• Learn how the press works
• Make a good trailer
• Journalists are humans, too
• Your game actually matters
• Participate in the community
• Be provocative!
• Don’t be literal

Michael Angst of ELine Media, which works to balance commercial game publishing with youth empowerment and is the publisher of the popular educational game design platform, Gamestar Mechanic, suggested first and foremost that game design businesses must understand and align all stakeholders. Angst noted that making games for impact often involves balancing the goals of diverse stakeholders: public interest funders, private funders, commercial partners, academic institutions, and nonprofit partners. He cited the concept of the double bottom line, in which financial success is only meaningful if the product has impact, and advised developers to choose revenue models that are organically aligned to the gameplay and expectations of the player community, as well as to think of their game as a service, not as a product. Finally, he suggested using the game’s community of interest to help with promotion and distribution.

Dr. James M. Bower, was the final speaker of the panel; his company Numedeon created Whyville, which is based on research Bower conducted at CalTech. Speaking from his experience as an academic computational neuroscientist, he cited independence, control, and sustainability as his three reasons for forming a company and leaving the university setting to develop his platform. Bower argued that if you build something that is valuable and useful, it can sustain the market. He also advised developers to spend as much time thinking about how to measure their game’s impact as they do designing the game itself. Bower identified the following challenges to bringing a social impact game successfully to market:
• the one-offs: need context for players’ motivation and impact
• shelf space: how do you differentiate your game in such a crowded gaming environment?
• feedback: 30/70 rule, reserve budget for incorporating feedback on future iterations
• collaborative design: kids are better at this than adults

Bower announced that Whyville is opening a game arcade for designers to post their games for play-testing by kids on Whyville and concluded by positing that textbooks are giving way to digital media, and not in the form of digitized textbooks, creating an opportunity for games to be the new structure of curriculum.

Day 1 concluded with the annual Games Expo Night, but not before Ze Frank closed the day with his keynote, “Games for Change: A Meditation.” Frank reflected on when he first heard about games for change, and how unsettling the term was, like tofu candy corn, or baconnaise. He quoted the Bible and gave demos of his own games: Atheist, Buddhist, and Christian. He described his struggle with spending a lot of time creating play spaces, then getting really bored and moving on, then seeing a therapist and learning about the Jungian neurosis of puer aeternus, or eternal child, who has difficulty finding the right kind of job, belief in changing the world, lives in a fantasy world, and suffers feelings of a “provisional life” and that one is not yet in real life. Frank posed the concept of network dynamics of human behavior: why can’t we predict how we ourselves are going to act in specific situations? He worried over the power that Mark “Siddhartha” Zuckerberg has in staring down a network with the greatest dataset in all of history. Finally, he reflected on advice from yesterday’s G4C 101.5 workshop, such as “don’t smooth out the rough edges” and “iterate, iterate, iterate” to conclude that games for change, with its conflict of child vs. adult, game vs. change, calls up a deep and powerful dark art.

By Emily Kornblut

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Day 1: G4C Festival Workshops

Posted by Mark Smith on 05-24-10

Two simultaneous workshops launched this year’s festival—G4C 101.5: A Workshop for Making Social Issue Games, a new iteration of past years’ 101 Workshop, and The Power of Design: Youth Making Social Issue Games workshop, a brand new event for 2010. 

This year’s official hashtag is #g4cfest10, for those who want to share or catch up via Twitter.  We also have a few “Twambassadors” sharing what they notice throughout the festival on a g4c Twitter List.

Notes from The Power of Design: Youth Making Social Issue Games Workshop

Games for Change Executive Director Alex Quinn introduced this workshop track by outlining three key goals of the day.  Discussing:

1) what does game design mean for learning and 21st century skills?
2) what are tools for teaching game design?
3) what are specific examples of youth game design programs?

Throughout The Power of Design workshop, speakers explored the transformation of youth from game players to game producers, and the emerging understanding of tools, techniques, and intelligences that this shift requires.  Speakers ranged from practitioners to researchers to students themselves, extensively discussing how game design cultivates STEM skills (science, technology, engineering, and math), the relationship between learning and creating, and the importance of assessment.  Two game design platforms in particular—Gamestar Mechanic and Scratch –  received repeated mention by panelists.

Allyson Peerman introduced the AMD Foundation’s Changing the Game program and reflected on the increased acceptance and appreciation of both social issue games and the relationship between games and learning since the initiative launched two years ago.

The three speakers in the first session each brought a unique perspective to the question, “why is designing games good for learning?” Alan Gershenfeld, founder of E-Line Media, told his own story as a game developer at Activision and the deep mastery of subject matter required to create a game. He described the depth of social, cultural, political and military history knowledge amassed in the process of developing Civilization.  Similarly, he noted the parallels between the physics involved in developing the skateboarding game Tony Hawk and what could be the basis of a high school physics curriculum. Gershenfeld argued that the power of games for learning is in the complex system thinking, rigor, and discipline required to develop them, as well as in their ability to motivate and provide relevancy to kids and their future professional life.  Leah Gilliam from Quest to Learn, a new New York City public school explained her work in creating immersive and game-like learning experiences.  Using a game design, systems-thinking methodology, the school’s designers and teachers help kids first understand the systems of games, and then what these systems look like in the world around them. Gilliam clarified that the school is not about playing games, but rather, about learning that is inspired by what’s best about games: immersive, media-rich, just-in-time, interdisciplinary, rule-based, goal focused, core mechanics, and interdependency. Stating an idea that would be repeated by others throughout the workshop, Gilliam described as a basic tenet of games, “a need to know, and then share what you know.” Betty Hayes of Arizona State University rounded out the panel with her experiences becoming involved with game design and TechSavvy Girls through an interest in gender. In her work, she had found that gaming was a gateway to computer science for boys, and wanted to know if it could serve as a similar entry point for girls. In studying The Sims, she found that it is a useful game design tool, especially for thinking about learning differently and understanding game design as the design of play, not the design of technology. Hayes argued that the public debate over the rules found in online game fan communities is the same sort of evidence-based argument construction we hope kids will develop in school.

Building on these ideas, Idit Caperton and her team from the World Wide Workshop presented two pilots of the Globaloria game design program, in Texas (a charter school model) and West Virginia (a statewide public school system model).  Globaloria’s purpose is to develop content knowledge and technical skills through project-based, student-centered, social learning. The program aims to bring the theory of constructionism into practice through social networking and gaming technologies, with six “contemporary learning abilities” as its target outcomes. Videos of students and educators from both programs highlighted skill development, improved literacy, and changing student perceptions on social issues. David Lowenstein, the program’s state director in West Virginia explained that, although they are trying to transform public education on a systemic level, the program has also had bottom up demand from teachers because their students are so engaged. The program also features extensive professional development for educators, a student internship program, and statewide competitions. Program Director Shannon Sullivan described the three components to Globaloria’s online environment:
1) wiki as transparent design studio with embedded curriculum embedded
2) blogs
3) website/resource library

Laura Minnegerode and Rebecca Reynolds, two of the researchers studying Globaloria’s impact, described the data they are collecting.  The focus of their evaluation is on learning, engagement, and knowledge development of students and educators. Reynolds’s research seeks to understand what informs a shift in student motivation, and whether participation effects attitudinal change. Alex Quinn asked an important question of Globaloria’s West Virginia pilot: “how did you infiltrate a whole state system when we hear so much about educator resistance to this kind of work?” Caperton attributed their success to the program being grounded in research, and focusing on STEM and a new model of student engagement. She pointed out that they took the risk with a small group of teachers, and then made the case with their success, to which Lowenstein added that having teachers and students speak for themselves is a powerful response to skeptics. Caperton concluded that their next challenge is building a sustainable business model and affecting policy.

The morning closed with two short sessions. First, Eric Nunez and Mike Edwards of Parsons The New School for Design gave an overview of six game design platforms, chosen for their appeal to young game designers and because many have associated curriculum for educators.

Scratch: Imagine, Program, Share
• developed at MIT
• not meant for game design per se, but visual programming language that helps develop relevant skills
• drag and drop interface, adjustable parameters
• 500,000 registered users, 1 million projects uploaded - well developed community
• Scratch Ed community provides support for educators and after school facilitators, forum for exchange on curriculum
• Forum for registered languages in 12 languages
• Scratch Day - annual event
• works on Mac/Windows/Linux, is free
Game Maker: Play, Make, Share
• developed by professor in the Netherlands to help undergraduates with game design/programming classes
• now used frequently in middle/high school, also by independent game designers because its easy to do rapid development
• created over ten years ago, well supported, regularly updated
• drag and drop interface, adjustable parameters, very customizable
• debug version lets designers see what happens behind the scenes, which is great for kids to see what their parameters require players to do and what the actual outcomes of their decisions are
• 300,000 registered users, 87,000 games created, regular competitions for users
• Windows only, although there is talk of versions to be released for Mac and PSP
• lite version is free, $25 for the pro version
Kodu Game Lab
• developed by Microsoft Research, released last year
• drag and drop interface
• 3D environment
• runs on Windows and XBOX 360
• free demo version, $5 full version (full version only on XBOX 360 Live Arcade)
7Scenes: Direct, share, play
• mobile platform, developed by Waag Society in The Netherlands, used in secondary schools there
• game logic embedded in content
• emphasis on “scene building”
• web-based, runs on Nokia, currently single-player on iPhone and Android
• free to play, paid subscription required to develop and organize games
Gamestar Mechanic
• developed by Parsons Institute of Play and University of Wisconsin
• started in 2006
• originally funded by MacArthur Foundation, now supported by Institute of Play and E-Line Media
• it is both a game and a game design platform, although the focus is not on programming
• Flash based
LittleBIGPlanet: Play, create, share
• developed by Media Molecule and Sony
• known for its great 2D physics engine
• over 2 million games uploaded, enormous community around it
• many contests, downloadable content
• $30 for game, $399 PS3, $130 PSP

Nunez and Edwards identified Scratch as the easiest place for students to start with game development because it has the simplest interface.  The speakers suggested that, for educators hoping to use these platforms with students, LittleBIGPlanet is easy to pick up, but hard to master; Gamestar Mechanic is also easy to just pick up and start understanding because logic is built into the game and no knowledge of programming logic required. In response to the question of building a social issue game on one of these platforms, Edwards noted that on 7scenes there are many historical and advocacy games because it’s mobile and geography-based. For example, a student can see how a neighborhood used to be, how it has progressed, and then envision/design how it might be in the future.

Next, Colleen Macklin of PETLab and John Sharp of Savannah College of Art and Design debuted their newest and soon-to-be launched project, Activate!, a curriculum and game design project supported by AMD’s Changing the Game. Activate! is web-based and will be available to anyone, with pilot implementations running in both China and the US (the game is currently being translated into Mandarin). Styled on classic, 8-bit games (built on Game Maker) and designed by Parsons graduate students at PETLab, Activate! focuses on game design, game playing and sharing, and social issues. There are four levels: rookie, design apprentice, master designer, and design ninja, which include missions, challenges, and even a game generator at the ninja level. STEM skills are embedded throughout the experience and a facilitator’s guide and challenges are discreetly available for download by educators. A codex (their more fun word for glossary) includes terms both related to social issues and game design for users to learn as they go.

After lunch, Rafael Fajardo and Scott Leutenegger of P4 Games (pixels, programming, play, and peadgogy) at the University of Denver presented with Karen Michaelson of Tincan on their respective projects teaching STEM skills through game design.

Leutenegger described P4 Games’ summer game camp, teacher game institute, and school year programming, in which both youth and teachers create games. Examples of youth games creatively explored student emotions and issues of identity; teachers designed games on the electoral process.  Michaelson described Tincan programs, which in addition to summer camps, offers a biotech/CSI/game development afterschool program for middle school girls, and a three week summer institute for teachers (one week a practicum in the summer game camp).

Leutenegger sees the advantages of game design for STEM learning as students wanting to make something, which allows educators to sneak learning in. Fajardo noted the importance of having a finished artifact of learning and the desire to share it and receive feedback (all ideas that were later backed up by the experiences of sixth graders from Quest to Learn). Also reinforcing the methods of Quest to Learn, Michaelson suggested that game development encourages kids to think in computational terms, to understand the patterns that emerge from computer science and apply them in much broader contexts. Finally, expanding the acronym to STEAM, the panel discussed why art matters to STEM, particularly the way it can renew students’ suppressed voice and engage a different kind of student who might otherwise be attracted to STEM programs.

Game Design and STEM Learning Presentation Slides

In the panel on evaluation, Jim Diamond of the Center for Children and Technology outlined backward design and logic models as framework for CCT’s evaluation of two game design projects, Global Kids’ Ayiti and a Boys & Girls Club project with PETLab and Games for Change. In the process of backwards design, Diamond suggested thinking backwards: start with a gap analysis to identify the change you’re hoping for, determine what qualifies as acceptable evidence, then plan learning experiences and instruction. Developing a theory of change is simply a question of what one hopes to get out of involving kids (and adults) in game design. Diamond described logic models and formative evaluation as a kind of design thinking, analogous to the process of play-testing in game design itself. Alex Games from Michigan State University’s Games for Entertainment and Learning Lab challenged the group to reconsider current models of evaluation. Reminding us that the purpose of assessment is to make informed decisions. Games asked provocative questions such as, what are the desired learnings, who are the desired learners, and what counts as evidence of learning? Citing a need for greater discussion of the role of instructors in the learning process, he argued that game design theory underrepresents the role of instructors, and instructional design theory underrepresents learners. Games then presented a proposal for a theory of game design learning:
• games are by nature interactive media
• games communicate designer’s intentions
• games allow players active participation
• game participants use unique forms of language
• game design as a communication system and a form of literacy: as a cultural product, as meaningful media, as mechanical system
Games concluded with his idea of documenting from the ground up through behavioral evidence (what do learners do?), language evidence (how do they talk?), and artifact evidence (what games do they make?).

The final two sessions of the day showcased a number of youth game design programs to give participants an idea of what these concepts look like in practice. First, Barry Joseph moderated a panel of representatives from organizations who have adopted and adapted Global Kids’ Playing for Keeps program. Otis, a former youth leader with Global Kids, explained the program and gave a demo of Tempest in Crescent City, the game he helped design while a participant. He also described how the program had helped him learn game design, communication skills, valuing others’ opinions, research skills, world issues, and making a difference. Jack Martin from the New York City Public Library discussed how their pilot in three libraries was an experiment in mini courses, as opposed to the drop-in youth programming they have traditionally offered. While IT and attendance were challenges for the libraries, Martin felt that kids do want to learn serious content after school if it is engaging. Thaddeus Miles of Mass Housing in Boston described a very different pilot program, working across many different sites, where the technology and instructors’ skill sets varied greatly at each location. Miles said their greatest challenge was training the trainers - older instructors who had a paradigm shift to go through regarding gaming to get past stereotypes and misperceptions. Before moving on to the last two examples, Selen Turkay, a researcher from Teachers College explained their goals for evaluation: whether the training effectively trained facilitators and what facilitators learning can be transferred to other programs. One major finding was that facilitators had to modify existing curriculum based on needs, knowledge, interests of youth in their specific context.

Marc Lesser of MOUSE explained that their programs are designed around a trajectory and a desire to engage youth year after year. Their group of learners is not varied - they are all already engaged by technology and gaming, and expect to be able to “hack the system” and know what is coming next in the program. MOUSE’s challenge has been adapting programs so that they worked in a minimally guided online environment. Lesser showed wireframes of the step-by-step, series of experiences they are creating for their youth.

Paul Allison of the NYC Writing Project talked about Tech Thursday sessions for educators to talk about serious gaming. The group started with comparing, discussing, and analyzing issue based games, then continued learning by making paper based games, attending G4C Festival, and playing Evoke. Allison said that playing Evoke inspired a community/school garden, and lead to drawing connections between gaming and gardening.

Spreading Serious Game Design: Global Kids’ Playing for Keeps Capacity Building Program Presentation Slides

The day concluded with two additional exemplars of the day’s ideas. Cindy Rondeau from Boys & Girls Clubs of America showed MyClubMyLife.com and presented Game Tech, a game design program and curriculum funded by Todd Wagner Foundation. The program was developed on Scratch, and as John Sharp explained, has the following learning goals: systems thinking, iterative design process, introductory programming concepts, game design principles, problem solving skills, and teamwork & collaboration. The program includes a facilitators guide, step-by-step guides for all eight activities, and “recipe cards” for instructors, all of which is available online. Sharp noted that the strengths of the curriculum come from feedback during the pilot process. Rondeau mentioned that Game Tech 2 will include a social issue component so that the games kids create relate to what is happening in kids’ lives, the same way that all Boys & Girls Club programming does (should be released in early 2011). Al Doyle and four of his sixth grade students from Quest to Learn showcased the learning process that happens in his Sports of the Mind (game design) classroom.  His students began designing games with Gamestar Mechanic, then moved on to become beta testors for Atmosphir, a new platform, and now are designing games with LittleBIGPlanet. One student, known for making the most difficult games, said, “I like to make my game really challenging because it encourages people to play it more.” Doyle said that he gives assignments tied to specific core mechanics and learning experiences, but that, overall, his students learn so quickly that he wouldn’t be able to formally teach them fast enough. When asked whether social issue games are addressed in his classes, Doyle maintained that the school is changing the very relationship of students to learning, and students to teachers, a process that in itself makes them change agents, even if social change itself isn’t embedded in the curriculum. Unknowingly closing the loop on the discussion from the morning, the students told participants that they know they are getting better at game design when they share their games with others, have it play-tested, and receive feedback, and that learning game design has taught them persistence, how to understand systems, and how to learn.

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7th Annual Games for Change Festival May 24-27, 2010

Posted by Mark Smith on 04-26-10

U.S. Chief Technology Officer 
Aneesh Chopra, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, 
“Law and order: SVU” EXECUTIVE producer neal baer, M.D. Army Brig. Gen. Loree K. Sutton, M.D. AND DIGITAL PIONEER ALAN KAY
HEADLINE 7th annual Games for Change™ Festival
NEW YORK CITY, MAY 24 – 27, 2010

Festival expands to four days and includes day-long programs presented by the Games for Learning Institute and a Youth Game Design Workshop supported through the AMD Foundation’s AMD Changing the Game initiative

http://www.gamesforchange.org/fest2010

New York, NY (April 26, 2010) – Games for Change, the leading global advocate for making and supporting digital games in the public interest, announced today Aneesh Chopra, the first U.S. Chief Technology Officer, as Keynote for the 7th Annual Games for Change Festival taking place in New York City May 24 – 27 at Parsons The New School of Design. Organizers also announced the complete line-up of confirmed speakers, including former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, “Law and Order: SVU” executive producer Neal Baer, Army Brig. Gen. Loree K. Sutton, Director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (DCoE) and digital pioneer Alan Kay.

The Games for Change Festival is the only festival dedicated to the growing movement of Digital Games for Social Change; convening leaders from government, philanthropy, academia and the game industry to raise the sector of impact-focused games.
“With the seventh annual Games for Change Festival we are proud to present an inspiring line up of speakers from the White House, the Supreme Court, the Defense Centers of Excellence and the top echelons of the entertainment industry all of whom have recognized the power of digital games to foster meaningful learning, health and social impact,” says Alan Gershenfeld, Chairman of Games for Change. “This diverse mix of speakers coupled with an extensive program of panels, workshops and hands-on demos makes this year’s Festival a must attend for anyone interested in the growing field of social impact games.”

The 2010 Festival will be expanded from three to four days, to incorporate an additional focus on the educational impact of games along with a series of exciting new initiatives. The Festival will open with its popular and newly expanded, 101.5 Workshop, and debuts a day-long workshop entitled “The Power of Design: Youth Making Social Issue Games” created to help middle and high school teachers, non-profit leaders, and others develop social issue game design programs for their school curriculums or after-school programs. The new workshop on youth game design programs is supported by the AMD Foundation and will be held on May 24, 2010, at Parsons The New School For Design. The workshop is part of AMD’s signature education initiative, AMD Changing the Game, designed to promote social issue game development as a tool to inspire teens to learn, improve their science, technology, education and math (STEM) skills, and become more engaged with global social issues.

May 27, the fourth, and final day of the Festival, will be presented through a new collaboration with the Games for Learning Institute based at New York University. The multi-institutional G4LI studies the educational use of digital games, and investigates their socio-cultural, cognitive, and emotional impact. It develops design patterns for effective educational games that industry partners can draw on to assure high quality when designing their own games for learning. Its current focus is on games that teach science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to middle-school students. “Games for Learning is only 18 months old, but reflects the efforts of many professionals already working across a broad spectrum of inquiry for many years in computer science, educational technology and psychology and game design,” according to Ken Perlin, Director of Games for Learning. “On behalf of our G4LI partners from NYU and our eight partner universities, it is a honor for the Games for Learning Institute to help extend the mission of Games for Change to include the voices of our colleagues and friends in the community of learning games by hosting the first ever Games for Learning Research and Design Innovation Day at the Games for Change Festival. The program will be held at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences on Thursday, May 27, 9 a.m.- 6 p.m. with a Games Fest to follow at 251 Mercer Street [at Mercer and West 4th Streets], Room 109 [enter on Gould Plaza at West 4th and Greene Streets].

The Annual Games for Change Festival brings together the world’s leading foundations, NGOs, game-makers, academics, and journalists to explore how best to harness the powerful medium of computer and video games to help address the most critical issues of our day, from poverty, climate change, global conflicts, to human rights.

The festival includes four days of panels, keynotes and brainstorming sessions, as well as funders’ meetings, press briefings, and the always popular Expo and reception where attendees can have the direct experience of playing pioneering social impact games.

Featured Speakers

Prior to his appointment by President Obama in April 2009 as the U.S. Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra served as Virginia’s Secretary of Technology, leading the Commonwealth’s strategy to effectively leverage technology in government reform, promoting Virginia’s innovation agenda, and fostering technology-related economic development. Previously, he worked as Managing Director with the Advisory Board Company, leading the firm’s Financial Leadership Council and the Working Council for Health Plan Executives. 

Since her retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has founded Ourcourts.org, a game-based civic education resource for middle and high school students and teachers.  “As the first generation digital natives, today’s youth have demonstrated the potential of digital media for civic education, political organizing,
and civic decision-making,” Justice O’Connor has said.  “Ourcourts.org seeks to capitalize on this potential to reinvigorate civic learning and civic participation.”

Neal Baer is Executive Producer of NBC’s “Law and Order: SVU” and a medical expert. During his tenure, the series has won the Shine Award, the Prism Award and the Media Access Award, and has grown in both critical and popular stature. The series regularly appears among the top ten television dramas in national ratings. Prior to his work on SVU, Baer was Executive Producer of the mega-hit NBC series “ER”. A member of the show’s original staff and a writer and producer on the series for seven seasons, he was nominated for five Emmys as a producer and two as a writer.  “Telling stories,” Dr. Baer has said, ‘whether on television, in movies, novels or in games is one of the most powerful tools we have for promoting social change.”

Army Brig. Gen. Loree K. Sutton, M.D. is Director of the Defense Centers of Excellence for Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (DCoE). Sutton is the highest ranking psychiatrist in the U.S. Army, and has served as the director of DCoE since November 2007. She also serves as special assistant to the assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. DCoE is sponsoring a revolutionary initiative that addresses the timeless experiences of combat. The Theater of War will present performances of Sophocles’ Ajax and Philoctetes for military audiences nationwide at military sites, suicide prevention conferences, service academies, war colleges, and medical schools. ‘Listening to the stories of Ajax and Philoctetes from 2500 years ago, one cannot escape the realization that the challenges of reintegration are as old as war itself,” says Sutton.

Dr. Alan Kay is best known for the idea of personal computing and the intimate laptop computer, and the invention of the now ubiquitous overlapping-window interface and modern object-oriented programming. These were catalysed by his deep interest in education and children, which continues to be an inspiration to him. Kay, one of the founders of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center known widely as XEROX PARC led one of several groups that together developed modern workstations and the forerunners of the Macintosh: including Smalltalk, the overlapping window interface, the EtherNet, Laserprinting, and network “client-servers”. Kay has more than lived up to the phrase he coined: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” 
Additional confirmed Festival speakers include:  Clay Shirky, Internet expert and author of Here Comes Everybody; Nick Bilton, Specialist at the The New York Times R&D Lab & author of the forthcoming book, I Live In The Future And Here’s How It Works; Katie Salen, Executive Director of NYC’s innovative “game school” Quest To Learn; Dr. James Paul Gee, Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies, Arizona State University; Micah Sifry, co-founder TechPresident.com and Personal Democracy Forum;  Michael Levine, Executive Director of The Joan Ganz Cooney Center, and internet humorist Ze Frank.  A complete list of speakers can be found on the Games for Change Festival website.

The 2010 Games for Change Festival is supported by the AMD Foundation, The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Parsons New School for Design, and in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. The Games for Learning Day is sponsored by Microsoft, Motorola and the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University.

The Festival is open to the public. Passes run from the student rate of $100 - $600. For a complete line-up of speakers or to purchase a pass: http://www.gamesforchange.org/fest2010


About Games for Change (G4C)
Founded in 2004, Games for Change is a non-profit which seeks to harness the extraordinary power of video games to address the most pressing issues of our day, including poverty, education, human rights, global conflict and climate change. G4C acts as a voice for the transformative power of games, bringing together organizations and individuals from the nonprofit sector, government, journalism, academia, industry and the arts, to grow the sector and provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and resources. Through this work, Games for Change promotes new kinds of games that engage contemporary social issues in meaningful ways to foster a more just, equitable and tolerant society. www.gamesforchange.org.

About The Games for Learning Institute (G4LI)
The G4LI is a joint research endeavor of Microsoft Research and a consortium of universities. The partners include: Columbia University, the City University of New York (CUNY), Dartmouth College, Parsons, Polytechnic Institute of NYU, the Rochester Institute of Technology, Chile’s Pontifical Catholic University, and Teachers College as well as NYU. The Institute’s aim is to identify which qualities of computer games engage students and develop relevant, personalized teaching strategies that can be applied to the learning process. http://g4li.org

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Games for Change Announces Formation of New Consulting and Producing Services Group

Posted by Mark Smith on 04-19-10

New York, NY (April 19, 2010) – Games for Change announced that award-winning game developer Asi Burak has assumed the responsibilities of an Executive Producer, spearheading a new consulting and producing services group within the organization. The move takes effect immediately and extends the mission of the non-profit organization to reach beyond the impact of its annual festival (taking place in New York City May 24 – 27), workshops, website showcasing impact games and on-line resources.
Heading the newly created group, Burak will work with individuals and organizations that are interested in or actively pursuing computer and video games to further their public, philanthropic or academic interests. The suite of services will seek to lift up the field of digital impact games and can range from the modest to the comprehensive via the following packages: 

- Orientation to the social impact games space;

-  Concept workshop to review current materials and ensure a high-level plan and design for a game project;

-  Taking a project from concept through vendor selection; and

-  The full-range of executive producing services, serving as the agent of the client in supervising and managing the project from concept phase to launch and beyond.

For additional information, please contact Asi Burak - - asiburak@gamesforchange.org / twitter: @aburak

Full press release:

GAMES FOR CHANGE ANNOUNCES FORMATION OF NEW CONSULTING AND PRODUCING SERVICES GROUP LED BY AWARD-WINNING “PEACEMAKER” GAME DEVELOPER ASI BURAK

New York, NY (April 19, 2010) – Games for Change, the leading global advocate for making and supporting digital games for social impact, announced that award-winning game developer Asi Burak has assumed the responsibilities of an Executive Producer, spearheading a new consulting and producing services group within the organization. The move takes effect immediately and extends the mission of the non-profit organization to reach beyond the impact of its annual festival (taking place in New York City May 24 – 27), workshops, website showcasing impact games and on-line resources.

Heading the newly created group, Burak will work with individuals and organizations that are interested in or actively pursuing computer and video games to further their public, philanthropic or academic interests. The suite of services will seek to lift up the field of digital impact games and can range from the modest to the comprehensive via the following packages: 
- Orientation to the social impact games space;
- Concept workshop to review current materials and ensure a high-level plan and design for a game project;
- Taking a project from concept through vendor selection; and
- The full-range of executive producing services, serving as the agent of the client in supervising and managing the project from concept phase to launch and beyond.

The first clients are already in final contract and will be announced during the 7th Annual Games for Change Festival, the organization’s flagship event taking place in New York City May 24 – 27 at Parsons The New School of Design. It is the only festival dedicated to the growing movement of Digital Games for Social Change which convenes leaders from government, philanthropy, academia, non-profits and the game industry to raise the sector of impact-focused games. www.gamesforchange.org/festival2010

“With Asi on board, Games for Change is now in a position to fulfill the many requests we receive from organizations for help guiding individual game projects toward realizing their full potential,” says Alex Quinn, Executive Director of Games for Change. “These expanded services further our mission to serve and lead the field of social impact games.”

Prior to joining Games for Change, Burak co-founded Impact Games, producer of the internationally-acclaimed “PeaceMaker” and “Play the News” platforms. He also served as a consultant to companies such as Newsweek and McCann Erickson, around the development of games to promote messaging, content or learning objectives. Burak is often interviewed by international media (BBC World, ABC, Al-Jazeera, NPR, New York Times, Time, Wired), and invited to speak at conferences and institutions including the Sundance Film Festival, The Skoll Forum, The Serious Games Summit, GDC, SXSW, and The US Army War College. Prior to Impact Games, Burak was VP of Marketing and Product at Axis Mobile (acquired in 2008 by Synchronica), where he introduced pioneering location-based mobile apps and games to a worldwide market (Asia, Europe, U.S.). He holds a Masters of Entertainment Technology from Carnegie Mellon and a BA in Design from the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem.

About Games for Change (G4C)
Founded in 2004, Games for Change is a non-profit which seeks to harness the extraordinary power of video games to address the most pressing issues of our day, including poverty, education, human rights, global conflict and climate change. G4C acts as a voice for the transformative power of games, bringing together organizations and individuals from the nonprofit sector, government, journalism, academia, industry and the arts, to grow the sector and provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and resources. Through this work, Games for Change promotes new kinds of games that engage contemporary social issues in meaningful ways to foster a more just, equitable and tolerant society. www.gamesforchange.org.

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Games for Change Festival Event Explores How to Make Games to Enhance Learning May 27

Posted by Mark Smith on 04-18-10

April 21, 2010

New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences will host “Games for Learning: Research and Design Innovation” on Thursday, May 27, 9 a.m.-6 p.m. at 251 Mercer Street [at Mercer and West 4th Streets], Room 109 [enter on Gould Plaza at West 4th and Greene Streets]) as part of the 7th Annual Games for Change Festival.

The day is organized by the Games for Learning Institute (G4LI), a joint research endeavor of Microsoft Research and a consortium of universities. G4LI studies the educational use of digital games and investigates their socio-cultural, cognitive, and emotional impact.

The day’s sessions will include: “When Can Computer Games Be Useful for Instruction?,” “How to Take Advantage of the Medium to Support Active Learning,” and “Action Video Game Playing as a Learning Tool,” among other presentations. G4LI is developing design patterns for effective educational games that industry partners can draw on to assure high quality when designing their own games for learning. Its current focus is on games that teach science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to middle-school students.

G4LI Co-Director Jan Plass, a professor in NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, said: “The Games for Learning: Research and Design Innovation Day at the G4C Festival is significant because it brings together researchers and designers from across the country to discuss not only the specifics of game design for learning, considering game mechanics, audiences, and learning goals, but also methods to study games and assess learning as well as important learner variables, such as engagement or self-regulation.”

The event is part of the 7th Annual Games for Change Festival (May 24-27) at Parsons The New School for Design May 24-26.

To register and for a complete schedule of all festival sessions, which feature U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, “Law and Order: SVU Executive Producer Neal Baer,  digital pioneer Alan Kay and others, click here. go to: . The festival includes four days of panels, keynotes, and brainstorming sessions, as well as press briefings, and an expo and reception where attendees can have the direct experience of playing pioneering social impact games. For more information, call 212.998.3411.

Reporters wishing to attend the May 27 session or the Games for Change Festival must RSVP to Michelle Byrd at mbyrd@michellebyrd.net.

The Annual Games for Change Festival brings together the world’s leading foundations, non-governmental organizations, game-makers, academics, and journalists to explore how best to harness the powerful medium of computer and video games to help address the most critical issues of our day, from poverty, climate change, global conflicts, to human rights. This year’s sponsors include the Knight Foundation, the AMD Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and Parsons The New School for Design. The last day of the festival, Games for Learning: Research and Design Innovation is sponsored by Microsoft, Motorola and the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

About Games for Change (G4C)

Founded in 2004, Games for Change is a non-profit organization which seeks to harness the extraordinary power of video games to address the most pressing issues of our day, including poverty, education, human rights, global conflict and climate change. G4C acts as a voice for the transformative power of games, bringing together organizations and individuals from the nonprofit sector, government, journalism, academia, industry and the arts, to grow the sector and provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and resources. Through this work, Games for Change promotes new kinds of games that engage contemporary social issues in meaningful ways to foster a more just, equitable and tolerant society.

The Games for Learning Institute

The G4LI is a joint research endeavor of Microsoft Research and a consortium of universities. The partners include: Columbia University, the City University of New York (CUNY), Dartmouth College, Parsons, Polytechnic Institute of NYU, the Rochester Institute of Technology, Chile’s Pontifical Catholic University, and Teachers College as well as NYU. The Institute’s aim is to identify which qualities of computer games engage students and develop relevant, personalized teaching strategies that can be applied to the learning process.

For more information please visit here.

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7th Annual Games for Change Festival - May 24 - 27, 2010

Posted by Mark Smith on 03-24-10

Visit the Festival website here.

Games for Change is delighted and honored to announce this year’s keynote on May 25th:

The first-ever U.S. Chief Technology Officer: Aneesh Chopra!

We’re also honored to have with us again:
The Honorable Sandra Day O’Connor, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (Ret.) for the festival keynote, Wednesday, May 26th

Other featured speakers include:

Clay Shirky, Internet expert and author of Here Comes Everybody

Nick Bilton, Specialist at The New York Times R&D Lab & author of the forthcoming book, I Live In The Future And Here’s How It Works

Katie Salen, Executive Director of NYC’s innovative “game school” Quest to Learn

Neal Baer, 5-time Emmy-nominated executive producer of Law and Order

Dr. James Paul Gee, Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies, Arizona State University

Army Brig. Gen. Loree K. Sutton

Micah Sifry, Co-founder TechPresident.com and Personal Democracy Forum

Kurt Squire, Associate Professor of Educational Communications and Technology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Constance Steinkuehler, Assistant Professor in the Educational Communication & Technology program in the Curriculum & Instruction Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Omar Wasow, Ph.D. candidate in African American studies and Government at Harvard University.

Clive Thompson, contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, Wired, and Fast Company.

Ze Frank, internet humorist.

Among many others.

Overview

This May, the only festival dedicated to the exciting new movement of Digital Games for Social Change will explore real-world impact, the latest games, and a variety of funding strategies. Hosted in New York City by Parsons The New School for Design and The Games for Learning Institute at NYU, the 7th annual Games for Change Festival will take place May 24 - 27, 2010.

97% of teenagers are playing games - perhaps the most potent medium of our time for learning and civic engagement. The Annual G4C Festival brings together the world’s leading foundations, NGOs, game-makers, academics, and journalists to explore how best to harness this incredibly powerful medium to engage young people and the general public in the critical issues of our day.  Now in its seventh year, the Annual Games for Change Festival is the biggest game event in New York City, and has events around the world.

Called “the Sundance of video games” for “socially-responsible game-makers” we’re promoting a new genre of video game - games to change the world - for the better.  Join us!

The festival includes four exciting days of panels, keynotes and brainstorming sessions, as well as funders’ meetings, press briefings, and the usual excellent networking opportunities. This year also features the always-popular Game Expo and reception where attendees can play these new games first-hand.

Check out the festival site here.

New Features

The Power of Design: Youth Making Social Issue Games
Games for Change is excited to premiere this day-long workshop on game design programs for youth on Monday, May 24th. Young people are intensely curious about how games are made, and now with the availability of several game creation tools, they are becoming not just consumers, but game makers. Game making incorporates a wide range of technical and artistic skills, and is an exceptional way to engage learners in complex systems thinking. We created this workshop especially for teachers, after school program leaders, and mentors who want to leverage the enthusiasm for games to create an innovative learning experience that incorporates many of the skills youth need to thrive in today’s world. Some of the key questions we will tackle include: Why is game creation good for learning? How do you structure a successful program that optimally uses game design for learning? What works for what age groups? What kind of teacher/staff prep is required? Can youth game development help improve skills in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)? How can social issues be integrated into the game design program? The workshop will feature creators of exemplary game design programs, a close look at some of the amazing game design software now available, and indispensable advice for setting up your own youth game design program.

This workshop is made possible by the generous support of the AMD Foundation.

Also debuting at the 2010 festival is a bonus day What Makes Games (Really) Good for Learning on Thursday, May 27th sponsored by the Games for Learning Institute at New York University which will focus on various aspects of games for learning, including:

- The design process and team composition for educational games

- Research methods for studying games in learning contexts

- Design patterns for effective educational games

- Assessment, in-game and out-of-game

- Integration of games into traditional and non-traditional curricula

And don’t forget the pre-festival workshop for newbies on May 24th.
Let the Games Begin: 101 Workshop on Making Social Issue Games - This workshop is a soup-to-nuts tutorial on the fundamentals of social issue games. Appealing to both those who are new to designing learning games but passionate about social issues, and those already underway in game production, the workshop will feature leading experts on game design, fundraising, evaluation, youth participation, distribution, and press strategies.

We look forward to seeing you all there!

We are thankful for the generous support of our Festival sponsors, the Knight Foundation, the AMD Foundation, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, as well as Parsons The New School for Design.

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Apply to the Cooney Center Prizes for Innovation in Children’s Learning

Posted by Mark Smith on 02-03-10

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop is accepting applications for the inaugural Cooney Center Prizes for Innovation in Children’s Learning, a national competition intended identify, inspire, nurture, and scale breakthrough ideas in children’s digital media and learning.  The program will annually award cash prizes and provide ongoing business planning support to innovators in children’s educational media.

The Cooney Center is challenging innovators in two categories: Breakthroughs in Mobile Learning and Breakthroughs in Literacy Learning. Up to five finalists in each category will be invited to pitch their ideas to media industry and education leaders at an event held at this year’s E3 Expo. This year’s prizes include $50,000 towards prototype development in the Mobile Learning category and $10,000 and the opportunity to work with Sesame Workshop to turn a literacy idea into a product for national dissemination via Sesame Workshop’s revival of the iconic literacy show, The Electric Company.

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Will Wright Discussion at NYU February 17th

Posted by phoebe on 01-26-10

Games for change is proud to be sponsoring with the Games for Learning institute a discussion featuring Video game pioneer Will Wright, the creator of “SimCity” and “Spore,” will lead “Why Games are (Good) for Learning,” a discussion on how digital games encourage learning, on Wednesday, February 17, 6 – 7 p.m. at the Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at New York University, 566 LaGuardia Place (at Washington Square South).

The event, presented by the Games for Learning Institute (G4LI), is free and open to the public, but a ticket is required for entry. To obtain tickets, go to http://skirballcenter.nyu.edu/calendar/games or email info@g4li.org. For more information, call 212.998.3342. The event is co-sponsored by the NYU Game Center, Games for Change, and Microsoft Research.

Wright, awarded the PC Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005, has been called one of the most important people in gaming, technology, and entertainment by publications such as Entertainment Weekly, Time, PC Gamer, Discover, and GameSpy. In 2009, he left publisher Electronic Arts to form his own think tank for the future of games, toys, and entertainment—the Stupid Fun Club.

About Games for Learning Institute
The multi-institutional Games for Learning Institute studies the educational use of digital games, and investigates their socio-cultural, cognitive, and emotional impact. We develop design patterns for effective educational games that industry partners can draw on to assure high quality when designing their own games for learning. Our current focus is on games that teach science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to middle-school students.

About the NYU Game Center
The NYU Game Center is housed in the Skirball Center for New Media at the Tisch School of the Arts and is an all NYU collaboration of the Tisch School, Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences,Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development, and Polytechnic Institute of NYU. The Center is supported by generous grants from an anonymous donor, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Sharon Chang and the TTSL Charitable Foundation.

About the Jack H. Skirball Center for Performing Arts at NYU
The Skirball Center is the premier venue for the presentation of cultural and performing arts events for NYU and lower Manhattan. The programs of the Skirball Center reflect NYU’s mission as an international center of scholarship, defined by excellence and innovation and shaped by an intellectually rich and diverse environment. Since 2003, the 860-seat Center has provided a unique venue for enhancing a sense of community while continuing the Greenwich Village traditions of creativity and artistic discovery with a broad range of compelling performance events at affordable ticket prices. Led by Executive Producer Jay Oliva (President Emeritus, NYU) and Director Michael Harrington, a natural and vital aspect of the Center’s mission is to build young adult audiences for the future of live performance.

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Games for Change needs your help!

Posted by Mark Smith on 12-30-09

Games for Change (G4C) is a 501c3 which seeks to harness the extraordinary power of video games to address the most pressing issues of our day, including poverty, education, human rights, global conflict and climate change. G4C acts as a voice for the transformative power of games, bringing together organizations and individuals from the nonprofit sector, government, journalism, academia, industry and the arts, to grow the field and provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and resources. Through this work, Games for Change promotes new kinds of games that engage contemporary social issues in meaningful ways to foster a more just, equitable and tolerant society.

Games for Change is the primary community of practice and international nexus for this emerging sector, with regional groups and events around the world.  Founded in 2004, Games for Change acts as a knowledge base and resource hub to help organizations and individuals network and develop video game projects beyond their traditional expertise, and provides special assistance to foundations and nonprofits entering the field.  G4C is working with a variety of high impact partners to foster and shape this new genre, including Microsoft, mTV, the White House and a variety of NGOs and universities.  G4C has a vibrant online community and extensive web resources, a hub where visitors can play all the latest games and find the latest research.  The Annual Games for Change Festival, called “the Sundance of video games” “for socially-conscious game-makers” is now the biggest game event in New York City.  The 7th Annual Festival takes place May 24 - 26, 2010 at Parsons, The New School for Design.

We think games are the greatest medium of our time to engage young people - and mass audiences of all kinds - in the most pressing issues of our day.  We see kids playing these new social issues games for 6 - 8 - 10 hours at a time - millions of kids.  We see kids clicking on the word “games” 50 times more often than other words on sites like pbskids.org.  We see tens of thousands of letters to congress and other real-world actions being generated directly from these new games.  This list goes on.

If you’d like to help us grow this field - to make more social issue games for positive impact - please donate. 

I have never written such a letter.  But Games for Change really needs your help this year.

Thank you for any contribution you can make - you help keep us going strong. 

Suzanne

Suzanne Seggerman
President, Co-founder
Games for Change
http://www.gamesforchange.org

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Games for Change at the White House today!

Posted by Mark Smith on 12-23-09

Games for Change is pleased and honored to announce our support and participation in the White House STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) initiative announced today by President Obama.  In collaboration with our partners E Line Media and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, Games for Change is part of a major public-private partnership to launch a series of national game competitions to spur and promote new games for STEM learning.  The finalists of these contests will be shown at this year’s Annual Games for Change Festival on May 25, 2010.  The President’s announcement highlighted a STEM competition involving a joint MacAthur Foundation and Sony initiative featuring Little Big Planet as the development platform. See the press release here: http://gamesforchange.org/STEM

For G4C media inquiries or more information, please email: STEM@gamesforchange.org

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Games for Change is Seeking a Project Manager: National STEM Game Challenge

Posted by Mark Smith on 12-23-09

In response to The President’s Innovate to Educate STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) Initiative

The project manager will be responsible for leading a high-profile, cutting-edge public-private partnership initiative dedicated to discovering the potential of videogames to promote STEM skills. Partners include Games for Change, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Street and E Line Media. This 60% job will be based in the NYC offices of Games for Change and will last for nine months, with an opportunity to renew based on projected funding. Salary will be commensurate with experience.
Working closely with a governing board from the three organizations, the project manager will provide day-to-day oversight throughout the year and have the following primary responsibilities:

Primary Responsibilities:

Develop and coordinate contest guidelines, jury engagement, public visibility and promotion.
Organize outreach and develop needed incentives to attract a diverse group of game developers to apply their craft to STEM-based games.
Foster connections between developers and marketing/distribution partners to help ensure the games reach target audiences in both formal and informal settings.
Help define the “value add” of newly designed games for learning within school and community settings, with a particular emphasis on reaching historically underserved populations including girls and minority students.
Promote alliances that will help young people become producers—in addition to consumers—by providing long-term partnering and mentorship opportunities with industry and youth development professionals.
Take lead in responding to funders and media requests for information.
Manage budget and project reporting requirements.
Oversee web development, documentation of best practices and other multi-media production
Supervise project staff and volunteers.

The ideal candidate will have at least five years of professional experience and relevant educational credentials. S/he will have managed or produced in the following areas:

Contests, competitions, or large scale media productions
Collaboration of diverse teams with participants from backgrounds from academic, non-profit, and media sectors.
Project management including fundraising, budget management, and timely delivery of expected outcomes/deliverables.

The ideal candidate will have the following qualities and skills:

Expertise in a relevant field of knowledge including science, math, digital media, learning, child and youth development
Ability to work with a variety of personalities and skill sets
Independent thinker and worker
Innovative and flexible problem-solver
Detail-oriented, multi-tasking wizardry
Ability to “manage up” with diverse leadership styles
Sense of humor

This position is funded for a minimum of one year through a dedicated grant. We anticipate receiving additional funding for this position beyond the initial term.

How to Apply
Indicate the title of the position you’re applying for (“Project Manager”) in the SUBJECT line of an email to jobs@gamesforchange.org. Your cover letter should be BOTH included in the body of the email and attached along with your resume (in rich text, MS-Word or PDF format). In your letter, please let us know where you heard of the position, why you are suited to this role, and how the position relates to your career objectives and personal interests. Only those candidates selected for interviews will be contacted. This position is currently open and may be filled at anytime.

About Games for Change
Games for Change is a non-profit which seeks to harness the extraordinary power of video games to address the most pressing issues of our day, including poverty, education, global conflict and climate change. We are a voice for the transformative power of games, bringing together organizations and individuals from the nonprofit sector, government, journalism, academia, industry and the arts, to grow the sector and provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and resources. Through this work, Games for Change promotes new kinds of games that engage contemporary social issues in meaningful ways to foster a more just, equitable and tolerant society. www.gamesforchange.org

About The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Street
The mission of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop is to foster innovation in children’s learning through digital media. The Center supports action research, encourages partnerships to connect child development experts and educators with interactive media and technology leaders, and mobilizes public and private investment in promising and proven new media technologies for children. For more information, visit http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org.

About E Line Media
E-Line Media is a publisher of digital entertainment that engages, educates and empowers with a core focus on computer/video games and webcomics/graphic novels. E-Line is in development on a slate of original games and comics that are fun, relevant and genuinely impactful in the areas of learning, health and youth empowerment. The E-Line team features seasoned executives who have helped build some of the world’s leading game and digital comic franchises as well as social entrepreneurs who are committed to harnessing popular media for impact.

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Announcing the 7th Annual Games for Change Festival - May 24-26 2010

Posted by Mark Smith on 12-21-09

On May 25th, we will feature a series of short talks by thought leaders on the future of digital media.  Speakers include Clay Shirky, intertnet expert and author of Here Comes Everybody; Katie Salen, Executive Director of NYC’s innovative “game school” Quest To Learn; Nick Bilton, specialist at the New York Times R & D Lab & author of the forthcoming book, I Live In The Future And Here’s How It Works; Dr. James Paul Gee, Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies, Arizona State University; Micah Sifry, co-founder TechPresident.com and Personal Democracy Forum, and many others.

Also, back by popular demand is the 101 Workshop on May 24 (under separate registration and open to all.) We will also have new programming for youth educators using games, a special session on assessment, a private funders meeting, and of course the Expo Night where festival-goers can play the newest games firsthand in a lively and action-packed atmosphere.  And as always, we’ll have expert sessions, provocative lunch discussions, and ample networking opportunities.

For more information, please see the general festival web site here.

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South Korean Games for Change Festival

Posted by Mark Smith on 09-22-09

This week our own Suzanne Seggerman will be traveling to Gyeonggi Province in Korea to attend KSF 2009, the first annual Korean Serious Games Festival.  The event is being held amid high public interest and is expected to take the lead in the development and distribution of serious games in Korea and the region.  Some 50 serious game companies plan to participate in KSF 2009, where activities will include conferences discussing global trends in serious games, and competitions.

“This serious game festival has two purposes.  The first is the development of the game industry in our region and the second is the provision of learning through games.  We hope to cultivate our province as a mecca of serious games and support contents development that can be presented to the world,” says the governor of Gyeonggi Province, Kim Jung-ho.  Gyeonggi Province plans to stimulate export of its game industry, which accounts for 63% of its contents export, through the event.

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Photos from the 2009 Games for Change Festival

Posted by Mark Smith on 06-04-09

Browse our slideshow of images from the 2009 festival and 101 workshop!

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G4C Festival Day 2 Summary

Posted by Mark Smith on 05-30-09

Posted by Emily Kornblut

This year’s Festival wrapped up with its third day of keynotes, panels, and conversations, with speakers throughout the day not only exploring how social issues can be integrated into games, but also considering how the best of gaming can create social change in the world.

To open the final day, Henry Jenkins and James Paul Gee engaged in a “fireside chat” on topics from how people learn from games, to the opportunity to transfer elements of participatory culture to participatory democracy, to what gaming can tell us about the future of schools. Using the example of his current work on women who become designers through playing The Sims, Gee suggested that passion, although treated as a trivial factor in schools, is the key to deep learning. Gee and Jenkins also agreed that the communities surrounding games play a critical role in creating space for discussion and mentorship that cultivates learning. Although these best features of learning in game communities are hard to replicate in schools, both Gee and Jenkins suggested that the institution of school is in need—and on the verge—of a paradigm shift. Responding to a question from the audience, Jenkins observed that the term “serious games” may displace fun, a key entry point into gaming in the first place, and instead suggested that we need to harness the power of play.

On the two morning panel tracks, the strategy sessions focused on the perspectives of funders and an example of a public/private partnership while the action sessions looked at ethics and game design, as well as the new participatory-driven mindset of game design.

Sharing their insights as funders of game-based projects, Jessica Goldfin of the Knight Foundation, Benjamin Stokes of the MacArthur Foundation, and Arlene De Strulle of the National Science Foundation offered the audience details on how grantseekers can approach them and how foundations are looking for help from projects. While each presented a different approach to funding gaming initiatives, all three recommended building personal relationships with funders and educating them about your project’s goals. Goldfin and Stokes also recommended the Knight News Challenge and the HASTAC Digital Media and Learning Competition, contests supported by their respective foundations as open calls for new ideas from the field. Stokes noted that MacArthur takes a unique approach in requiring that its projects ask a question, not just propose a solution. De Strulle emphasized that, while NSF is supporting gaming across all its divisions, it requires projects to focus on building the body of evidence around the impact of games on learning.

As an example of what a game can look like when it is the product of a public-private partnership, representatives of Warner Brothers and PEPFAR discussed their game Pamoja Mtaani, designed as an intervention for high risk behaviors leading to HIV, created for youth in Nairobi. Deployed in community centers on World AIDS Day 2008, the partnership took advantage of Warner Brothers’ existing game engine and entertainment and storytelling expertise, with the programming and connections PEPFAR already had with local groups in Kenya. The project also includes an extensive evaluation to measure behavior change and assess whether the game can increase youth self-efficacy along five risk factors. Echoing the advice of previous speakers, the panel stressed the importance of evaluation during both game design and implementation.

The ethics and game design panel included John Nordlinger of Microsoft, Allyson Bryant of Nickelodeon, Sam Gilbert, Research Assistant at project zero, Harvard and Doris Rusch, Post Doctoral Researcher at MIT Comparative Media Studies, Singapore-MIT. Bryant described Nickelodeon’s approach to ethics as designed to promote family co-play and building children’s self-efficacy, and Sam Gilbert discussed his work at project zero on designing games that support ethical play. Nordlinger observed that it’s not as much fun if you don’t know WHY you play games, and that the distinction between game ethics and real world ethics is not real and the line is blurring. One question raised during this panel was whether games should make people uncomfortable, and if companies have a responsibility to make people comfortable; the representatives from Microsoft and Nickelodeon both responded that their companies are very cautious in trying to create products that will not offend their audiences.

After a high school student addressed the audience with her insights about how to engage young people with games, Ivan Games, Sean Duncan, Moses Wolfenstein and John Martin from the UW-Madison Games, Learning and Society group led the “designer mindset” panel. In showing how game design has become more participatory, they shared examples such as Gamestar Mechanic and their own work on Local Games Lab, creating place-based mobile games.

During lunch, Frank Lantz and Karen Sideman revived their popular “the Frank Lantz and Karen Sideman show” with a review of their own sources of inspiration in order to answer the question, “is the field of G4C becoming so established that we’re starting to constrain what a game for change is?” Things that inspire Lantz include:
-economist Robin Hanson’s blog, Overcoming Bias: an example of game thinking applied to policy
-Gray by Intuition Games
-Kidney Chains: min-maxing approach to organ donor matching
-DayJet

Sideman shared the inspiration she finds in things that are modular, emergent, and distributed: Google Image Labeler, LOLCats,  and Terry Pratchett novels, respectively, saying that the more people attach individual meaning to content, the deeper the meaning becomes for everyone.

The afternoon continued with a conversation between writer Clive Thompson and game designer Ian Bogost about news and games. Talking about the rise of infographics and interactive maps as news reporting tools, they cited The Redstricting Game and Budget Hero as good examples of games that tie these elements together with game play. Bogost also pointed out that games have been in the news for over a century, and the crossword puzzle continues today to be an entry point to newspapers for many people. Looking to the future of news reporting, Thompson observed that newspapers can learn from games about good uses of incentives and community tools to draw readers in as contributors to news; Bogost introduced a concept he is now exploring, “computational journalism”, in which the people reporting news should know how to use the tools needed to create news artifacts, such as infographics and games.

And bringing this year’s Festival to a close, Lucy Bradshaw, the Executive Producer of Spore, walked the audience through the ways games have changed, the impact they are having on their players, and the possibility they have for creating social change. She cited examples of their use in medicine and the military, and mentioned how families with autistic children have written to her, saying that creating their own creature in Spore gave kids the ability to connect behavior to feelings; that their kids are “hardwired for gaming.” Bradshaw’s message about her own games, which were not designed to be educational, supported what Jenkins and Gee noted earlier that morning: the games foster learning through transformational experiences and are successful because they give players a personal hook and the ability to create content and share experiences. Looking ahead, Bradshaw said, “we’re trying to make game-makers out of the gamers who have been playing all these years,” and predicted opportunities for social change in that new platforms like flash-based and mobile games will make them more accessible for classroom use, and a new generation of “Millennial” game designers are entering the field with stronger skills and idealism.

For additional detailed notes and live blogging of the final day of the festival, check out Moses Wolfenstein’s live blogging and @jafish‘s notes.

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G4C Festival Day 1 Summary

Posted by Mark Smith on 05-29-09

Posted by Emily Kornblut

The first day of the Festival was high energy from the morning opening keynote by Nicholas Kristof to the evening’s Games Expo and announcement of the winners of the first Knight News Game Award:
Lifetime Achievement: September 12th” by Gonzalo Frasca
Honorable Mention: The Budget Maze by Gotham Gazette
Honorable Mention: Hurrican Katrina: Tempest in Crescent City by Global Kids
Winner: Play The News by Impact Games

After opening remarks by Suzanne Seggerman, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof delivered the opening keynote. Kristof related stories from reporting around the world to the message that motivating people to make a difference through empathy is more effective than intellectual arguments, an approach at which games can be highly successful. As an example, he mentioned a middle school class in the Bronx that created dearmrkristof.com, not because of reading his columns on Darfur, but because they had played rough capture of the keynote and coverage in The New York Observer.

Festival participants then had the choice of a “Strategy” or “Action” track, each consisting of two panels. The strategy sessions first presented research on the relationship between games, civic engagement, and student achievement, then on games and assessment. Joseph Kahne of Mills College discussed a recent national survey on video games and youth, dispelling popular myths about video games, and components of the gaming experience that dictate civic potential, including discussion and leadership opportunities. Ian Rowe of The Gates Foundation explained their initiative to reduce high school dropout rates and increase college completion, which will have an emphasis on new technology platforms like gaming. Rowe argued that the community working on these achievement issues sees gaming as the enemy, and is missing an opportunity to learn how to make learning immersive and fun.

Speaking about games and assessment, James Paul Gee, Constance Steinkuehler, Katie Salen, and Kurt Squire explored some of the new ways of thinking about assessment enabled by games and digital media. The panelists noted opportunities for:
-assessing problem solving
-distributing goals across an ecology of learning
-engaging students in assessments
-considering new assessment tools that align with changing theories of learning
-rethinking the value of content knowledge and the purpose of assessment overall

Although this panel was PowerPoint-free, you can read more in these notes from attendee @jafish.

In the action sessions, panelists discussed issue literacy and documentary games. The Issue Literacy session, which featured speakers Barry Joseph, Colleen Macklin, Mary Flanagan, John Sharp, and James Bachhuber, made the case that games cultivate skills such as agency, empathy, systemic design process, programming literacy, and problem solving. Speakers talked about their organizations’ work at the intersection of game design and curriculum design, where, as Barry Joseph said, teachers are transformed into facilitators whose goal is to facilitate the search for knowledge.

Tracy Fullerton (USC), Steve Anderson (USC), Emily Verellen (Fledgling Fund), and Susana Ruiz (Take Action Games) led the documentary games panel. Ruiz described the current landscape of documentary games as one that does not yet have a community of practitioners, nor an institutional framework. Verellen talked about the work of Fledgling Fund, which funds 90% social documentaries and 10% other media; they funded their first game this year.

After lunch, which included the option of Mary Flanagan’s Grow-A-Game Workshop, participants reconvened for a lively and interactive round of Iron G4C Designer: three teams, each with a designer, an activist, and an assessor, going head to head to create a social issue (non-technology) game with the secret ingredient of XL t-shirts. An expert panel of judges chose “torture” from a list of collectively brainstormed social issues and the teams competed to give the audience an inside look at the game design process. The winning team, Frank Lantz, Dixie Ching, and Constance Steinkuehler, created “The Memo”: three special assistants translate their bureau director’s description of torture into “acceptable language” for a memo.

The final panel of the day was Money and Meaning: a look at whether games for change can “do well by doing good.” Moderated by Seth Schiesel of the New York Times, Larry Goldberg, Sharon Knight, Alan Gershenfeld, and Lucy Bradshaw drew on their experience in the commercial game design industry in considering changes in the field that might create space for more mainstream social issues games:
-new platforms (mobile, social networking, APIs)
-as a result of the recession, more young creative game developers are out on their own with the tools to develop games independently
-advances in technology and production values

The panelists also agreed that even commercial games that aren’t intended to be about social issues often have deep social context embedded in their design choices or hold potential for significant behavior changes in their players.

Day One wrapped up with a business card swap networking game and the always exciting Games Expo, featuring more than twenty game and project demos, including Train, PlayPower, and the Knight News Award finalists.

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G4C 101 Workshop Roundup

Posted by Mark Smith on 05-27-09

Posted by Emily Kornblut

The Games for Change Festival kicked off today with its second annual G4C 101 Workshop. The day began with introductions from Suzanne Seggerman of Games for Change and Allyson Peerman of AMD, the sponsor of the G4C 101 Workshop, who spoke about AMD’s Changing the Game initiative, which supports game development programs to build students’ STEM skills and announced three new grantees.

Speakers throughout the day emphasized several keys to designing a good social issues game:
  -know your target audience
  -iterate often and rapidly
  -choose your platform and development team well, as they will impact many other factors
  -consider existing platforms and social media for the audiences they connect your game and issue to
  -when there are multiple strategies available to execute your game project, pick one, not all.

G4C Board Chair Alan Gershenfeld led the first session and walked through a publishing approach for games with impact. Distinguishing between game publishing and developing, he emphasized the importance of doing both audience and impact analysis in order to understand who the audience is, and narrow down the target: what do you want the audience to do? Take action? Be aware? Change behavior? He also focused on the organic alignment between social impact, what makes a game fun AND the financial/impact objectives. Using his current game in development, Talkers and Doers, as an example, Gershenfeld walked participants through decisions around marketing, distribution, execution, and assessment.

Jimmy Tom, the Manager of Bibliographic Services at the Foundation Center and Michael Levine, the Executive Director of the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Initiative
-HASTAC competition
-Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Health Games Research initiative
-Changing the Game
-Institute for Educational Sciences: National Center for Ed Research

A question from the audience asked where the funders are for games for change being made in the creative/cultural space, not just the education space, i.e., the equivalent of independent film investors.  Levine responded that we’re not there yet, but there is hope for a new generation of funders who are trying to be innovative.

Mary Flanagan of Tiltfactor Lab got everyone talking to each other with her Grow-A-Game session, demonstrating the work of Values at Play and the importance of design proficiency for making sure ideas translate into the core of the game, so that the game embodies the social value, rather than just being “about” the social issue. In small groups, participants drew cards from the deck to select a value, a game, and a social issue and brainstorm a new game based on all three.

Barry Joseph of Global Kids closed out the morning with an overview of assessment and measurement of the social impact of games for change. After reviewing a recent post on assessment by James Paul Gee, Joseph shared evaluations of ReMission and Ayiti as examples and offered three pieces of advice:
1. Don’t try to measure everything.
2. Don’t plan to measure something you can’t deliver.
3. You say what the project is; the evaluator says what the findings mean.

After lunch, Eric Zimmerman and Tracy Fullerton gave a crash course in game design, distilling it to the idea that every single game is its own set of problems with its own interesting solutions and exploring the concepts of mechanics, challenge, and balance. They also launched the room into a massively multiplayer game of rock-paper-scissors to demonstrate the role that rules play in game design. Their advice for marrying the activity in the system of the game with the content/issues you want people to learn or care about? Do one of the following:
  -simulate your subject (PeaceMaker)
  -illustrate your subject (Hush)
  -make the player the subject by focusing on the call to action (G4C-Parsons PETLab and Brenda Brathwaite of Savannah College of Art & Design walked us through the scale of game production, from “Microscopic” to “Xtra Xtra Xtra Large,” in terms of budgets, team size, timeline, and platform, with multiple examples of games that fit each size. Brathwaite also outlined the elements of the production process: funding, pitch, scheduling, risk management, external relations, team relations, triage, and approvals.

The final panel of the day focused on exposure, with journalist Heather Chaplin giving great advice on approaching the press: “we’re no longer at a place with games that you can get press just because you made a game, so you need to make it in a way that is newsworthy.” She advised game developers to pitch the unique story behind their games and think carefully about target audience when deciding whether to focus on industry or mainstream media outlets. Jason Rzepka of MTV shared best practices in gaining visibility for social issues games such as Darfur is Dying, PosOrNot and Debt Ski. He attributed the success of these games to factors such as unique opportunities for exposure and strategic partnerships. (Download his presentation slides.) Ian Bogost built on the morning conversation about distribution by talking about devices, channels, scarcity, methods of innovation (technology, content, and distribution: choose one), and will, explaining that an organization’s will to carry out an idea for a game and do something different from its traditional work is the most difficult part of game development.

After all the presentations, participants took a turn at game design, dividing into nine groups and each brainstorming a game concept within a social issue which they then had five minutes to pitch to a panel of judges. The winning concept was “Flush!”—a Flash based game for middle school students to learn about deteriorating water systems and how to prevent urban flooding & water contamination.

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Games for Change Announces the Finalists for the First Annual Knight News Game Awards

Posted by Mark Smith on 05-22-09

Games for Change Announces the Finalists for the First Annual Knight News Game Awards
Annual festival to honor the most innovative games addresing critical social issues

Games for Change today announced the finalists for the first annual Knight News Game Awards, which honors the best of this exciting new genre: games which are journalistic and enhance people’s ability to make decisions in a democracy. During the Games for Change Festival from May 27-29, the finalists will be honored at the Games for Change Expo on May 28 in New York City, where the winner will be announced at an awards ceremony sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Each of the finalists from the Knight News Game Award submissions aimed to meet certain core journalistic criteria: in their role as investigative reporting tools, they needed to expose an unknown logic or new information, uncover a truth, or provide editorial or commentary on a current event or issue. These games, like others highlighted at the Games for Change Festival, address some of the most pressing issues of our day, from poverty to human rights, global conflict to climate change. Along with the four finalists, other games will also be featured at the Games for Change Expo event on May 28. The four finalists are:

The Budget Maze: Players in Gotham Gazette’s web-based “Budget Maze” navigate a dreary dungeon. At various rooms, the player must find the zombie who holds the answers to a question about the city or state budget process in order to move forward.

Hurricane Katrina: Tempest in Crescent City: Global Kids Youth Leaders and game developers from Gamepill created a Web-based game, “Hurricane Katrina: Tempest in Crescent City” to recognize local heroes that emerged during the disaster. The game educated players on the essentials of disaster readiness and of reporters.

Play the News: “Play the News” is an engaging, community-driven experience that utilizes “interactive news” mini games to change news consumption from passive reading to active engagement. The platform is flexible enough to address a range of global and local content.

September 12th – A Toy World: Highly controversial at its launch in 2003, “September 12th” describes the post 9-11 world. Created by a team of Uruguayan game developers lead by a former CNN journalist, this game critically examined the US-led War on Terror.

“It’s exciting to see these new games emerge in their own right as powerful platforms where traditional storytelling and interactivity collide,” said Jessica Goldfin, Knight Foundation’s Journalism Program associate. “We know that games are good at communicating information, engaging with new ideas and issues, spurring meaningful action and teaching digital literacy. Knight Foundation wants to encourage games that teach the values of free expression and promote informed, engaged communities. We are thrilled to be part of this growing field.”

Called “an early Sundance of video games” for “socially-conscious game-designers” the Games for Change Festival brings together leading non-profit organizations, educators and game developers to explore the increasing real-world impact of digital games as an agent for positive social change. The Festival is a showcase for some of the most innovative new games in development and the international nexus of this new movement.  The three-day event will offer panels, interactive sessions, keynotes, networking opportunities and special programming to key audiences.

The Sixth Annual Games for Change festival takes place from May 27-29 at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City. For more information about the festival, or for an opportunity to play all of the Knight News Game Award submissions, visit gamesforchange.org/festival.

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation promotes excellence in journalism worldwide and invests in the vitality of the U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Knight Foundation focuses on projects with the potential to create transformational change. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

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Jill Tarter and Will Wright talk games with Seed Magazine

Posted by Mark Smith on 05-07-09

While developing his new game Spore, Will Wright indulged in his lifelong interest in astrobiology and drew from the work of Jill Tarter over numerous visits to the SETI Institute. In this video Salon, Wright and Tarter meet to ask each other questions about gaming and science, the value of scientific revolutions, and advanced life in the universe.

Watch or read the entire interview here.

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Knight News Game Award at the 2009 Games for Change Festival

Posted by Mark Smith on 02-17-09

Games for Change is pleased to announce the Knight News Game Award at
the 2009 Sixth Annual Games for Change Festival.  This year we will
recognize the best news games from the past several years in an award
ceremony at the Game Expo on May 28th, sponsored by the Knight
Foundation.

For more information about the award, please see: http://www.gamesforchange.org/knightcontest

And for more information about the festival, please see: http://www.gamesforchange.org/fest2009

Thank you and we hope to see you in May!

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Let the Games Begin:  A Toolkit 4 Making Social Issue Games

Posted by Mark Smith on 01-26-09

Games for Change is pleased to launch Let the Games Begin:  A Toolkit 4 Making Social Issue Games.  The Toolkit, created with the generous support of the AMD Foundation, is designed to help nonprofit organizations and others who want to know what it takes to make a successful social issue game.  The multimedia Toolkit includes extensive video presentations by experts in the field, articles, links to outside resources, any many game examples.  The Toolkit is available for free online at www.gamesforchange.org/toolkit.  We will continue to update the Toolkit as new resources become available.

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Suzanne Seggerman blogs at The Huffington Post

Posted by Elena Haliczer on 11-28-08

Suzanne Seggerman made her first foray as a Huffington Post blogger recently, asking “Does Obama Play Video Games?”. Noting that the idea that games can engage players with social issues is an idea building momentum, she cites some key evidence:

” Food Force has been downloaded more than 4 million times. Darfur Is Dying, more than 3 million plays, generating 50,000 “real-world actions” including letters to congress. AYITI: the Cost of Life, a game about poverty in Haiti
created with inner city youth in NYC, is being played by more than 2 million young people around the world.”

At Games for Change, we hope metrics like this help persuade this new administration not only of the variety of video games, but also of their exceptional power to make the world a better place.

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Study on Youth Living and Learning with New Media and Implications for Social Change Makers

Posted by Hsing Wei on 11-20-08

The results of a three-year ethnographic study, the largest study ever conducted of participation in the new media ecology by U.S. youth, was released today.  Stemming from research beginning in 2005 and spanning 23 case studies by 28 researchers and collaborators, the white paper brings a youth-centered perspective into the debates about the merits, influence, and intersection of games (and other new media) on youth development.


From interviewing and observing young people on social networks, video-sharing sites, gaming sites, cell phones, and ipod-like gadgets, the researchers unpacked behaviors and learning in every day activities that run contrary to common adult perceptions about what is a waste of time. 

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Election Games and the 2008 Election in Games

Posted by Elena Haliczer on 11-01-08

Like other election years, this one has seen the usual collection of interactive toys and candidate shooter-type games. We've chosen to highlight one election game – President Forever 2008, which we feel offers a more in-depth experience than these others, as a reminder that games can deepen one's overall experience and understanding of the political.

In addition to this game we wanted to call attention to two interesting developments in the overall universe of elections and gaming. The first was the news of the Obama campaign's in-game ads that provoked some very lively discussion across the blogosphere about gamers, games and politics.

The second was the growth of election-related machinima, whose notable examples include a satirical take on the Republican ticket and an attempt to poll World of Warcraft players to determine whether Azeroth is a red or blue state.

The combination of election games, in-game advertising, and machinima has brought more focus on the role of games in politics and vice versa. Because of this attention, it is ever more important to examine the meaningfulness of the game play and the power games can have to enliven our personal socio-political engagement.

"President Forever 2008": This in-depth strategy game allows the player to choose a candidate from the 2008 presidential primaries and set up their campaign strategy from turn to turn, adapting it according to successes and failures and relative performance of the other primary candidates. Comparable to ImpactGames' "Peacemaker" in its attempt to engage players in the complexity of a long-term peacemaking process, game play in this case aims to deepen one’s understanding of the impact of each strategic decision during a political campaign.

Obama's In-Game Advertising:

Obama Ad Screen Shots: http://www.politico.com/static/PPM106_obamascreenshots.html

Game Politics Report: "Obama Ads in Burnout Paradise": http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/10/09/report-obama-ads-burnout-paradise

GameSpot Article: "Obama Campaigns in Burnout, 17 Other Games": http://www.gamespot.com/news/6199379.html

Global Kids post: "Is Obama modeling a vision of youth engagement via its Xbox campaign ads?": .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Election-Related Machinima:

"Election Duel: McCain Vs. Obama--Who Get's Pwned?": http://machinima.com/film/view&id=30491

"Repuffs": http://www.machinima.com/film/view&id=29691

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Discovering and Filling Gaps in Funding: The Knight News Challenge, interview with Jessica Goldfin

Posted by Elena Haliczer on 10-01-08

G4C: Why don't you give us some background on the Knight Foundation's News Challenge and how that initiative evolved?

Jessica Goldfin: Well, we put a lot of thought into where we could help most, where we fit as an organization. We were interested to see organizations like The John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation begin funding digital media, but saw our role as very different.

We really felt that virtual communities didn't need our help, but that geographic communities might. We saw that the newspaper model was changing and had to change more, and started wondering how we could help those geographic communities and news providers get the news they needed in a way adapted to the digital media environment.

In the News Challenge's First Year Cycle, our winners included a game by Nora Paul from the Institute of New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota to create game prototype tools that will allow community leaders, game makers and journalists to develop games using real community issues.

We also funded a game by Paul Grabowicz and students at U.C. Berkeley called "Saving 7th Street Jazz and Blues" that recreates the buildings and tells the story of Oakland’s jazz and blues clubs, and another by Gail Robinson with GothamGazette to produce three news related games over the next few years.


G4C: What has The Knight Foundation been funding and doing internally to promote the creation of and interest in news related games and other digital media initiatives related to the dissemination of news?

Goldfin: We just funded you, Games for Change, to create a news game track at your annual festival and on your website. We believe that this will foster an interest in creating news related games.

We also awarded almost a sister grant to Ian Bogost, to assess what is and is not working in news games, to categorize types, and also build a community to stimulate a discussion of news related games.

Internally we also have a new hire, Kristen Taylor, who is our online community manager. She's created an online community for our initiative called the News Challenge Garage, to support potential grantees by connecting them with current grantees in mentorship positions. The News Challenge Garage is open to the public and meant to encourage grant seekers to apply. It's only open until November, so anybody interested in applying, go ahead and get on there!

G4C: Why are games an appealing medium for the dissemination of news?

Goldfin: First of all, we think any way we can engage this new generation of news creators and news consumers on a platform they are comfortable with, while also teaching them news literacy and our rights and freedoms under the first amendment, is worth funding.

We know that games are incredibly popular and that alone makes them a medium we should explore. We want to know how or whether we can create a game, that like Jim Gee (who is my hero now) says, can become not just informative to the player, but involve them in a process of preparation for future knowledge.

For example, the game Hush had everyone at the 2008 Games for Change Festival gripped because it was such a powerful game. It achieved a tremendous emotional response. We need games that do that, but are linked to action, long-term learning, and the future consciousness of the player.

G4C: How would you characterize The Knight Foundation's interest in games? Is it something you've had to work hard to sell internally, or has it been accepted easily? Are games an area you'd consider funding exclusively as a separate grant initiative?

Goldfin: We saw how very positive people's reaction was to Sandra Day O'Connor's "Our Courts" game project. We see it as a totally hip initiative, and a sign that games are becoming an important and acceptable way to educate and motivate youth about important issues and aspects of culture.

The fact is we don't have a set initiative for digital media. We're new to this, and we want to experiment; we want to explore and see what else is out there.

It might be worth possibly creating smaller grants in the future to target things like news games. A lot of our learning happens through doing.

Being at the Games for Change Festival this year was extremely helpful, because it gave us a sense of the whole landscape of game development and it helped us understand the funding needs of different kinds of games. One of my favorite moments of the festival this year was at the 101 Workshop, when Alan Gershenfeld gave a breakdown on funding for different size games. Smaller grants allow us to take more risks, and games might be an area to take them in.


G4C: How is funding games and other digital media projects in keeping with The Knight Foundation's mission?

Goldfin: We do a lot of work with journalists and news organizations, and the industry is in flux. It is redefining itself, so we, like the field of journalism, have to redefine our funding areas and explore our new options.

Still, we stay with our core mission--to lead journalism excellence, only now, into the digital age. It's not the values of journalism or The Knight Foundation that are in flux.


G4C: What games are The Knight Foundation looking at as good examples of news related games?

Goldfin: Peacemaker is really great. It's a game that considers all sides and so achieves a neutral point of view you look for in the best journalism.

G4C: What are some trends in grant-making at The Knight Foundation?

Goldfin: Well, as I said, when we launched our News Challenge we saw it as an experiment, and we still do. The News Challenge is showing us new grant-making areas, again for smaller grants, but also new initiatives.

One concrete example of that is our Knight Drupal Initiative. That arose from the News Challenge. We saw a lot of proposals involving Drupal, and some clear themes emerged. We saw a funding gap to fill as a result.

That's really what is so exciting about The Knight News Challenge, is that it exposes the gaps in funding and educates us. It makes us a better funding organization and helps us move the field in new directions, meeting the challenges of digital media while bringing our core values forward.


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New Study on Games and Civic Engagement

Posted by Suzanne Seggerman on 09-18-08

Yesterday the MacArthur Foundation announced a study they’ve funded, conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project and co-authored by Joe Kahne of Mills College about kids and games.  A primary finding from the study was that games have the potential to engage kids in civic participation and offer a rich environment for learning.  While we at Games for Change may feel like saying, “I told you so!”, we are of course thrilled to have such an important and thorough study with quantitative results to bolster our own long-held view that games have the extraordinary potential to create meaningful civic engagement and long-term social change.  It’s the kind of ground-breaking study that will have a major and lasting impact on the field.  Thank you Joe!  And the folks at MacArthur and Pew.

For more info see the press release or the full paper.

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Penny Arcade Expo - The Violence Thing and Beyond

Posted by Alex Quinn on 09-03-08

I spent Labor Day weekend at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle attended by an astonishing 58,000 game enthusiasts. Scores of exhibitors, including leading game publishers, showed off the latest games. The weekend included music, films, and of course plenty of gameplay. The Expo also featured panels on all kinds of game-related topics—from design to piracy.

I was part of a panel entitled Video Games, Politics & Policy: “The Violence Thing” and Beyond. Joining me were Dennis MaCauley, Editor GamePolitics.com; Bo Anderson, President, Entertainment Merchants Association; Jason Della Rocca, Executive Director, International Game Developers Association; and Jennifer Mercurio, Director, Government Affairs, Entertainment Consumers Association.

Much of our panel focused on digital games and First Amendment rights for game sellers, designers, and consumers. As with other new media before games, policy makers are grappling with how to balance the right to create, distribute, and receive information with other societal concerns. In the case of digital games, the societal concerns most often cited relate to the promotion of violent behavior. The debate is ongoing whether or not some digital games do in fact promote violence. (For a lively discussion on this topic see the recent postings on the Games for Change Social Issue List.) Nevertheless, the violence argument has been repeatedly used by state and local legislators to justify restrictions on game distribution. For the most part, these laws and regulations have not withstood judicial challenge.

My remarks on the panel focused not on “The Violence Thing” but the “Beyond.” Games communicate many images and ideas. Games for Change believes that digital games are an increasingly robust and vital platform to explore the political and social issues we face today. When viewed in a wider context that includes education, advocacy, politics, and civic discourse, it is easier to see that games deserve as much First Amendment protection as any other medium, and barriers that impede the entry of games into the market place of ideas should be discouraged.

One potentially serious barrier is the erosion of Network Neutrality. “Net Neutrality” assumes that internet providers will not advantage certain content providers and consumers by blocking, speeding up, or slowing down the flow of information. Many social issue games are distributed via the internet; a tiered approach to content delivery could greatly impact the ability of these games to reach the public. A policy of net neutrality continues to ensure that every internet speaker and listener—whether through games or other media—have the same opportunity to connect.

The excitement was everywhere at the Penny Arcade Expo. The gamers who gathered on mass to hear from expert game makers, debate the merits of the latest games, and simply to play, were knowledgeable, critical, and deeply engaged—a testament to the vitality of this growing platform for cultural communication. Behold the new literati.
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The Future of News Play: Asi Burak Envisions a YouTube for News Games

Posted by Elena Haliczer on 08-04-08

G4C: How is Play the News different from your first news game, Peacemaker?

Burak: “Peacemaker had a very different approach. It is a long form. To play the whole, it takes about four hours. It deals with complex issues and gives many perspectives, in order to address all agendas, and create a balanced, objective viewpoint."

"Play the News is very different. It really isn't as rich as Peacemaker on any one issue, but in some ways it is much richer because of the platform. News playing can go on forever, as people play different games and understand the news better."

G4C: Some people have already played some of the news games on Play the News, but for the rest of us, can you please describe the interaction?

Burak: "Right now we have one game template; eventually we will have more. In this game template, the player reads a short amount of background information on the game’s subject matter, and is then presented with a series of crises in the story, all of which can be resolved from the perspective of various real-world actors."

"In each crisis, the player chooses what they’d like to see happen, then predicts what will actually happen. Players’ ultimate ranking on the platform depends in part on how well and consistently they predict real-world outcomes."

"This means that the player does not have the instant gratification of raising their overall ranking. Instead, they are compelled to follow and engage with the actual news story, hoping their prediction was accurate. Once they find out the real-world outcomes, players return to the platform to check their ranking in the system."

"Really, Play the News is like a YouTube for news games. The games are short and to the point, but they get people involved in following the issues over time."

G4C: How does prediction figure into Play the News, and why do you feel it is an important element to the game platform?

Burak: "Prediction to us is a core component because it's giving you a very important reason to follow a news event. Part of the thinking we did about prediction and why it became a major element in Play the News, began as we got feedback about Peacemaker."

"People came to us about Peacemaker and said that for the first time that they understood the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that they could understand it in context, and in a deeper way. They said that having a deeper understanding made them very interested in the outcomes of and reactions to actions taken on both sides of the conflict, and that they would try to predict both."

"We started to see that prediction is a way to engage players because people are interested in competing with each other and themselves. That kind of predictive engagement with content really enhances people's interest in a news story over time."

G4C: Who creates game content and how are you currently choosing topics?

Burak: "Right now we have two guys whose job it is to create one of these games every day. We go through global headlines, decide on the subject, come up with the story outline, find images, and publish the game."

Actually, creating a game is not hard. It basically entails putting the content in the right places in the game template. "

G4C: How does Play the News enable organizations to create their own news games?

Burak: "First of all, this is a platform they can use. It can empower others, to create with low effort on their part, interactive news games about their content.

The whole idea is that we can go to a non-profit or to a news organization and have them write games for their content, and have them embed the games on their site. In essence, we've built the publishing tools to create viral games about the news."

Because it is a web platform, Play the News will evolve over time. It can be so much richer, and a lot more powerful when the user base and partnerships are there. Basically it can be an alternative for news consumption."

G4C: What are your criteria for organizations who want to partner with Play the News?

Burak: "We are very open. It could be very big media organization, a blogger who thinks this would be a great tool for them, a small media organization, a new media organization, or a nonprofit that creates a lot of content and wants to raise engagement."

G4C: What are your immediate and long-term plans for Play the News?

Burak: "Unlike Peacemaker, Play the News is a platform for games, and as such, it will change and improve. Right now it's in beta and we only have one game model. In the future we'll have more. We are also going to do a lot of things to extend our games to wider audiences. In fact, we just launched a Facebook application to reach the Facebook demographic. "

"Our long-term idea is loftier. We really want to prove that through this kind of non-linear interaction with news, through exploring it at your own pace and being rewarded within the system that you become a participant in the creation of as opposed to just a consumer of news."

"It really is the future of news."

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XBox 360 Games for Change Challenge Winners Announced Today in Paris!

Posted by Suzanne Seggerman on 07-08-08

From Paris - Today Microsoft and Games for Change announced the winners of the Xbox 360 Games for Change Challenge - a game contest on environmental sustainability made using XNA Game Studio, Microsoft’s toolkit which allows almost anyone to make and distribute a game for the XBox.  We launched the contest during last year’s 2007 festival Expo and then saw the 6 finalists during the 2008 festival just last month.  Today the final three were chosen and feted in a big splashy show at the Louvre.  It was great fun and the work was very impressive.  The 3 winners were CityRain from Mother Gaia Studio in Brazil in first place; Future Flow from Belgium’s Drunk Puppy in second, and CleanUp from the South Korean team Gomz in third.  We’ll be seeing those excellent games up on our site by the end of the month, and they’ll also be on XBox Live soon as well.

The entries for the other categories were also impressive.  The Imagine Cup is an annual contest created by Microsoft to encourage university students to tackle world problems through technology.  This year’s Imagine Cup attracted more than 200,000 students from more than 100 countries to create technology solutions around the theme of environmental sustainability.  2008 was the first year the game development category was included and the 6 game finalists from around the world stood up to some pretty intense competition over the past week.  They were all great games with serious messages and solid gameplay.  The criteria were primarily: Fun Factor, Innovation and Adherence to Theme.  Other judges besides me included Bill Wagner, XNA Product Manager, and John Nordlinger Senior Research Program Manager, both of Microsoft; and Ian Bogost CEO of Persuasive Games.

Winners were awarded $25K in prize-money and their games have a chance to be included on Xbox Live.  The winning team will also be considered for internships at Microsoft.

Keep your eyes out for more great G4Cs using XNA Game Studio - it’s a fantastic platform for this community.

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Photos from our G4C 101 Workshop

Posted by Elena Haliczer on 06-10-08

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How Suzanna Samstag Oh is Bringing Games for Social Change to Korea and a Regional Focus to Games

Posted by Elena Haliczer on 06-05-08

Suzanna Samstag Oh talks a mile a minute. I've barely gotten my laptop open and she's told me about her entire professional trajectory and the how's and why's of her current involvement in games for social change. It's fascinating. She's been a Peace Corps volunteer, headed up the creation of Newsweek's Korean edition, done freelance translation while shepherding her children through pre-school, and now teaches a class on social issue games for KAIST, the Korea Advanced Institute for Science and Technology, which is the MIT of Korea.

Suzanna Oh spoke on the "G4C Does TED" panel about the work she's doing on games for social change in Korea. To recap for those who did not either attend the festival or see that particular panel, Oh is a Games for Change Chapter leader, and just completed her first semester teaching a class on creating social issue games last semester at KAIST. The first class she says was more about "raising awareness of social issue games and challenging the preconception of games in Korea."

In Korea, she says, "there is an interesting dichotomy in the dialogue about games because while people in Korea are talking about game addiction, the government has decided games are a strategic industry because Korea doesn't have exportable natural resources. The thinking is that they have to develop their national intellectual products."

Oh's work so far has been to raise awareness of social issue games as a genre in both her students, and an interested, though unfamiliar, community of gamers, governmental organizations, and other groups.

The first semester of her class has focused on research, on finding out what issues Korean youth finds important, and contacting and being contacted by Korean governmental organizations and environmental action groups who have heard about her topic and are expressing initial interest in the outcomes. Her class also spent time playing existing social issue games like Ayiti by Global Kids and GameLab, and Peacemaker by ImpactGames.

A semester-long debate ensued over whether the students should focus on translating existing social issue games into Korean, adapting existing games for Korean issues, or creating completely new games with a regional focus.

During this debate Oh began to understand that, "culturally, the applicability of some existing social issue games in a homogeneous culture like Korea, where you are not dealing with hunger or immigration, and people aren't familiar with these issues, is pretty low. You're introducing these games to a culture that doesn't have those issues, and although you might want to share them, they do not understand the context to fully see their potential."

It was for this reason that the class decided it was important to create totally new, regionally focused games.

When creating social issue games, Suzanna believes that not only is it important to know the unique issues in your region, it is also important to understand the cultural stance on dialogue, especially about certain topics.

"For example ICED got a conservative backlash in the United States, but when you think about it, America is very receptive to that kind of critical dialogue. In other parts of the world, certain issues might not be open to a whole lot of debate. You have to be sensitive to how a culture reacts to dialogue."

In the course of the class, Oh and her students determined that the best topic for a regionally focused game would be on Korean reunification, and as they continue their coursework in the next semester, they will begin the conceptualization process on this proposed game.

Suzanna herself will be talking to governmental groups and others towards creating an unbiased, regionally focused game. Her chapter work will continue as she increasingly brings the message of social issue games into focus in Korea.

For those who wish to create their own regional chapter of Games for Change, she believes the first step is to raise awareness, to be able to explain what a social issue game is and why it can matter, not in global, but in a deeply localized terms.

We all look forward to hearing more from Oh and her work on social issue games in Korea, not only because she is one of our chapter leaders, but because we view this idea of regionalism in games as particularly important as this genre matures.


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The Honorable Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Makes a Strong Case for Games for Social Change

Posted by Elena Haliczer on 06-04-08

One of the highest points of this year's Games for Change Festival were the closing remarks made by the inveterately wry Honorable Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who not only presented a real case for social issue games while professing not to play games, but also fielded questions from Reuters and The New York Times with a cantankerous wit that lent a true joy to the last Q&A of a fascinating event.

Introducing her was Bob Kerrey, current President of The New School in New York and former Senator from Nebraska. He remarked that the judicial branch of our government is the least understood, but "the most important branch of government, because it is where we [the people] have the most power." His conclusion, "it is critical that we understand not just the ideas, but the commitments that make democracy work."

O'Connor, taking the stage, began, "had someone told me when I retired from the Supreme Court, that I would be presenting at a conference on digital media, I would have reacted with extreme skepticism." She then went on to tell the story of her involvement, beginning with her disturbance with the "increasingly vitriolic attacks against the Judiciary"--attacks she viewed and still views as holding a particular political agenda. "I always thought that an activist judge was a judge that got up every day and went to work," she concluded to applause and laughter from the audience.

The erosion O'Connor sees happening to the role and power of the judiciary branch is something she feels must be addressed in public education above all. "Public education is the only long-term solution for preserving an impartial judiciary and ensuring a robust democracy" said O'Connor, and was responded to with vigorous nodding throughout the crowd.

A more positive trend O'Connor noticed, was that of young people using interactive media to engage with politics and find their political voice. This was something O'Connor found highly intriguing, and she's set out, with help from Jim Gee to create a website called OurCourts. It is because O'Connor believes we must ensure that our future leaders are well-informed that she cares about "bringing the OurCourts project to life."

OurCourts is currently in development stages, but you can visit the landing page at http://www.ourcourts.org. Launching initially in September 2008 for teachers, and in September 2009 for kids, the site will teach students civics through entertaining multi-media problem-solving activities, including games.

Not only does OurCourts hope to teach students about civics, it also sets out to counteract the erosion of judiciary power and civil rights, by raising awareness of and engagement with the constitution as it is written and applied to real cases, especially in examples of cases that effect students in our schools.

Through OurCourts, O'Connor hopes to provide the text of the constitution in various contexts and "have students test out the issues" weighing and balancing their views accordingly.

While O'Connor sees the importance and implications of games and other interactive media, she is not a game player herself. When asked by a journalist from Reuters what video games she'd played before, she replied, "I don't play video games. Sorry!"

Despite her own lack of playerly interest, she's noted her grandchildren's engagement with games and digital media. She, like many educators and game theorists in the audience believes that "you learn by doing, and you remember and understand it better than if you're hearing it in the classroom" and that this engaged learning can be achieved in games and other digital media.

Her conclusion was that the ideas that would productively engage students and future leaders in the major issues of the day would be "seeded in this room" and would be as diverse as the imaginations of the people she addressed.


















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Registration for the Annual Games for Change Festival is still open

Posted by Elena Haliczer on 06-02-08

We are very pleased to announce that this year’s Games for Change Festival has a record attendance, so far at over 300 registrants. You may register at the door on Tuesday morning.  We look forward to seeing you all tomorrow!

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Announcing Open Registration for the Games for Change Festival

Posted by Elena Haliczer on 04-16-08

Registration for the 2008 Fifth Annual Games for Change Festival is now available!

Please join us at Parsons the New School for Design in NYC for our annual event bringing together non-profits, educators, game designers and activists of all stripes to explore the growing movement and emerging field of games for social change.

Leading scholars Jim Gee and Henry Jenkins will open the festival with a keynote conversation on June 3rd at 4:30pm.

We are pleased to announce our closing keynote this year will be the Honorable Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, scheduled for 4pm on June 4th.

Featured panelists include: Jim Gasperini, creator of Hidden Agenda, and Chris Crawford of Balance of Power and Balance of the Planet fame; Ken Eklund, creator of World Without Oil; Michael Levine, Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center; Shelley Pasnick, head of the Center for Children and Technology, Mary Flanagan Director of the Tiltfactor Lab, Tracy Fullerton of USC's EA Innovation Lab, and representatives from Participant Productions, the MacArthur and Knight Foundations, PBS, and Electronic Arts, among many others.


You will find our usual excellent blend of provocative panels, informal working groups, funders meetings, ample networking opportunities and the ever-popular Expo Night where you can see - and play - the new games firsthand, sponsored by Microsoft.

Check out the festival site here: http://www.gamesforchange.org/conference/2008/index.php

And don't forget the pre-festival workshop for newbies on June 2nd. We are happy to announce that this beginners workshop for non-profits new to the field. Let The Games Begin: A 101 Workshop for Making Social Issue Games was a MacArthur Foundation DML Competition award-winner out of more than 1000 applicants!

A separate registration for that day is now available from the festival site here: http://www.gamesforchange.org/conference/2008/101.php


We are thankful for the generous contributions of our sponsors AMD and Microsoft, as well as Parsons the New School for Design.

We look forward to seeing you all there!

Suzanne
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Let the Games Begin!  G4C Workshop wins DML Competition

Posted by phoebe on 02-21-08

We won!  G4C’s soup-to-nuts workshop for newbies is a winner in the first Digital Media and Learning Competition funded by the John D. and Catherine T.  MacArthur Foundation.  This workshop will kick off the 2008 G4C Festival taking place June 2 - 4 in New York.  One of 17 innovative projects to receive funding, the 101 workshop will feature leading experts — such as Eric Zimmerman (Gamelab), Ian Bogost (Persuasive Games), Alan Gershenfeld (Activision, E-line Ventures), Heather Chaplin (Smart Bomb) — on everything from game design to press strategies.  Space is limited - click here to learn more.

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Games for Change is hiring for a Program Associate

Posted by phoebe on 12-18-07

Games for Change is seeking a Program Associate to assist with a variety of projects including
PETlab (Prototyping, Evaluation, Teaching and Learning lab—a joint social issue game
development initiative with Parsons The New School for Design), our annual Games for
Change Festival, and new partnership development.

The Program Associate will provide administrative and other support for the Games for
Change Executive team.  Examples of duties include:

• Creating and maintaining tracking systems for projects and partnership development
• Coordinating phone conferences and meetings
• Drafting correspondence for potential partners and funders
• Formatting and providing Games for Change informational materials
• Formatting and proof reading reports and proposals

Read full job description>>

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Parsons and Games for Change to Launch PETLab

Posted by phoebe on 12-12-07

First-of-its-Kind Initiative Will Prototype Digital Games Addressing Social Issues;
To Partner with Microsoft and MTV in First Year

Parsons The New School for Design, in collaboration with the non-profit organization Games for Change, has announced the launch of PETLab, the first public-interest game design and research laboratory for interactive media. The initiative was made possible by a $450,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, as part of the foundation’s digital media and learning initiative established in 2006 to help determine how digital technologies are changing the way young people learn, play, socialize, and participate in civic life.

In its first year, PETLab will work with Microsoft’s Xbox development platform and MTV’s Think.MTV.com youth-focused online activist community on the development of both learning tools and digital games that explore social issues. “PETLab marks a new level of interaction with the growing number of companies and nonprofit organizations who are interested in developing games that serve as a catalyst for learning and civic engagement,” said Colleen Macklin, Parsons chair of Communication Design and Technology and director of PETLab. “While in the past we have designed games that address issues in the public interest, ranging from global warming to the electoral process, PETLab will give us the capacity to extend the reach of our efforts to new audiences and collaborators. Our goal is to create inventive intersections between the fields of game design, social issues and learning.”  Petlab Press Release>>

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Save the Date! 2008 5th Annual Games for Change Festival June 2 - 4

Posted by phoebe on 12-12-07

Come celebrate our 5th year!

Games for Change is happy to announce the 5th Annual Games for Change Festival on June 2 - 4 at Parsons, the New School for design in New York City.

Confirmed speakers include Jim Gee and Henry Jenkins in a keynote conversation (in honor of our Fifth!) and many others!

Exciting new activities and partners are in the works, including a day-long 101 workshop for those new to the field (aimed especially at non-profits) on the first day of the festival June 2nd, confirmed presenters there include Barry Joseph (Global Kids), Eric Zimmerman (GameLab), Heather Chaplin, (journalist/author) and Alan Gershenfeld (E-Line Ventures, formerly of Activision).  Along with 2 full days of festival programming on June 3rd and 4th, there will be media and funders briefings, working group breakfasts, Expo Night and lots of networking opportunities!

Call for proposals will be announced in early January, so stay tuned.

We hope to see you there.

Happy holidays!

Suzanne

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Project Manager Opening

Posted by phoebe on 11-15-07

Games for Change is seeking a Project Manager for its Prototyping, Evaluation, Teaching and
Learning lab (PETLab)  � a joint initiative with Parsons The New School for Design.  PETLab
develops new games, simulations, and play experiences which encourage experimental learning
and investigation into social and global issues.  It is a place for testing prototyping methods and
the process of collaborative design with organizations interested in using games as a form of
public interest engagement… Download full job description

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G4C is Growing -  Seeking Online Community Manager

Posted by phoebe on 09-24-07

Games for Change is expanding in a number of new directions, including management of an online social network dedicated to the field of digital media and learning.  We are currently looking for an Online Community Manager  to join our team.  The Community Manager will help us craft a vision and oversee the editorial strategy for this social network that serves researchers, academics, media producers, policy makers, educators, and the public.  (See PDF job description)

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Summary of G4C 07 Festival Panels

Posted by phoebe on 06-14-07

Images, audio, video, transcripts, and blogged opinions of Games For Change’s 4th Annual Festival are on the web for those who missed the event (or who just want to re-live some of the interesting conversations and energy).  A round-up of the two days of conversation and panels can be found here.

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G4C and Microsoft announce Xbox Partnership

Posted by phoebe on 06-12-07

Check out the Xbox 360 Games for Change Challenge at: www.xbox.com/g4c

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Twitter and notes from the G4C Festival

Posted by phoebe on 06-11-07

The Games for Change Annual Festival June 11 and 12th.

Check ou Ian Bogost’s live blog from the fesitval

Twitter from the festival at http://twitter.com/G4C.

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Register for the Festival

Posted by phoebe on 04-13-07

Registration open for the 2007 G4C 4th Annual Festival!  Keynotes are announced and you’ll find featured sessions and a great line-up of speakers here.

Submit your Game for Awards consideration here.

Recommend a game you like here.

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Vote for Us!

Posted by phoebe on 04-09-07

Please vote for Games for Change here to help us get funding from the NetSquared Innovation Fund.  20 projects from the 150 submitted will get funding based on who gets the most votes.  So we need your help!

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G4C June 2007 Festival Announcement & Call for Proposals

Posted by phoebe on 03-14-07

We are pleased to announce that the Games for Change 4th Annual Festival will be held on June 11th and 12th at Parsons the New School for Design in New York City. 

We are currently accepting proposals now until March 15th.
We’d like to receive from our community not only concrete proposal submissions, but we also welcome feedback on the kinds of subject matter you’d like to hear about.  Please send proposals to: events@gamesforchange.org with “2007 G4C Festival proposal” in the subject header by March 15.  We look forward to hearing from you!

For submitting a proposal, please include the following as guidelines. 

1. Proposed title of session
2. Name, phone and email of primary contact for this proposal
3. Names, affiliations and titles of panelists and moderator
4. Preferred length of slot: 30, 45, 60 mins
5. Brief description of session
6. 3 Take-aways
7. Bios of all proposed participants
8. Intended audience: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced
9. Any additional information?

Session Criteria

• Importance/relevance to the emerging field of social change/social issue games
• Expertise/experience of panelists - ability to communicate ideas effectively
• Thought-provoking/discussion - worthy subject matter (Making “statements” is less interesting than fostering discussion across multiple viewpoints)
• New approach or new content - (different from last year or what you’ve seen at other conferences)

For reference, here is a link to last year’s program:
http://www.gamesforchange.org/conference/2006/index.php

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NYC Salon: Ethics and Values in Games

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 01-14-07

On January 9th an evening salon was held in NYC at Parsons the New School for Design in conjunction with G4C and the NYC Games Scholars.  The program included:

Jesper Juul (Assistant Professor, Centre for Computer Game Research Copenhagen; Visiting Scholar, The New School) on The Problem with Games and Players and the Rest of the World: What happens when a player picks up a game? What is the boundary between what is in the game and what is outside the game? Does fiction or rules matter?
—and—
Helen Nissenbaum (Associate Professor in the Department of Culture and Communication and Faculty Associate of the Information Law Institute at NYU) on Values-at-Play: A Methodology for Bringing Values into the Design of Games

Demos were featured by Mark Grob—DWI Learning Experience/Game; Lance Vikaros, Teachers College—Global Warming Interactive (produced by Michael Hillinger); Michael Edwards, The New School—Inspector Carbone

NETWORK HOUR EXHIBITORS: Robert Steele and Kim Blozie—Earth Intelligence Network; Matt Slaybaugh—Go Rabbit, Go!

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Podcasts Released from our June 2006 Conference/Festival

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 12-01-06

We're releasing our podcasts. The sound quality is a bit imperfect, but our speakers shine. There are two ways to browse the content:

1. View podcasts with descriptions
2. View just filenames (same as "continue reading" below)

While audio recordings are never as powerful as being there in person, and there's none of the powerful networking, we still hope these will make the community's knowledge more broadly accessible. Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

We’re Growing—Seeking Exec. Director, Social Network Manager, National Events Planner

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 11-22-06

Games for Change is growing! We're expanding our work with Parsons the New School for Design and the MacArthur Foundation, in addition to grants received over the past six months from Surdna, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. As part of our restructuring, Suzanne Seggerman will be assuming the role of President beginning in January; transition details for Benjamin Stokes are forthcoming; beginning today we are recruiting for:

• Executive Director: seeking a social change innovator and experienced program manager to lead a team of five people as the organization expands to a solid yet flexible institution at the forefront of a new form of media in the public interest. (See PDF job description.)
• Online Social Network Manager-Designer: Oversee the development and operation of an innovative online Knowledge Network. (See PDF job description.)
• National Event Planner (as staff or consultant): Oversee planning for all events over an intense eight-month period, including our annual Festival, with the opportunity to help grow new events for future years. (See PDF job description.)

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

G4C at two Festivals: Margaret Mead and Sundance

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 11-06-06

Games for Change is happy to announce we’ll be featured at two upcoming film festivals…

The first is this weekend in NYC at the Margaret Mead International Film and Video Festival, the longest-running showcase for international documentaries in the United States. The Festival is distinguished by its outstanding selection of titles, which tackle diverse and challenging subjects, representing a range of issues and perspectives, and by the forums for discussion with filmmakers and speakers.  This is its 30th anniversary!

Our panel at Margaret Mead will take place in the Linder Theatre at the Natural History Museum from 3:45-5:45pm on November 11th.  For parents, consider taking your kids to a documentary before or after, and then to this panel on games.  The games we’ll feature include: Ayiti: the Cost of Life, a game allowing the player to assume the role of various family members living in rural Haiti; Darfur is Dying, a game which attempts to put the player in the shoes of one of the 2.5 million refugees who are fighting for survival in the Darfur region of Sudan; A Force More Powerful, a simulation which helps to train activists in techniques for peaceful resistance to oppression; and Tropical America, a game bringing the real-world terrors of investigating secret violence in the Americas.

Next up: we will also be featured at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City Utah in January 2007 - more details to follow.

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

MacArthur Foundation to work with G4C on Events, Knowledge Network, Games Research

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 10-05-06

G4C is happy to announce that we are the project lead on a $250K grant from the MacArthur Foundation made to the Digital Innovations Group (DIG).  As part of MacArthur’s new Digital Media and Learning initiative we will be working on three projects.  The first is an online Knowledge Network for the national coordination of resources and community leadership; the second is a series of offline events to connect with policymakers, practitioners and the general public; and the third is research assessing the emerging field of digital games and social change.  The official grant recipient, DIG, is G4C’s fiscal sponsor.  Some additional details are available on the MacArthur site here.

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How to Get Involved

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 07-24-06

Heard about Games for Change and wondering how you can get involved or stay informed about our efforts? A few ideas: try joining our email discussion list. What are we talking about these days? Check out our conference program, see the links proposed by conference attendees, or read more about us. Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Conference Press

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 07-23-06

Recent press from our 2006 conference includes:

• 30-Dec: San Jose Mercury News: Forget Sonic. These video games are serious
• 8-Dec: Wall Street Journal: Games Show the Way
• 1-Dec: What is Enlightenment (magazine): Gaming for a Higher Cause
• 24-Nov: NPR (Here and Now): Gary Goldberger, G4C Ambassador in SL
• 16-Nov: Now Toronto (magazine): Activist gaming takes hold
• 1-Nov: Nonprofit Times: Gaming Wins New Advocates
• 27-Oct: Today Online, Courier Mail: 'Serious Games' take aim at shoot-'em-up video
• 8-Oct: La Revista: Jugar a cambiar el mundo (Puerto Rico)
• 7-Oct: Daily Camera: Gaming for Good
• 18-Sep: Plenty Magazine: Just Push Play (environmental games)
• 6-Sep: Palm Beach Post: New generation of video games takes on serious subjects
• 4-Sep: EuroGamer: Darfur is Dying (Interview)
• 23-Aug: NBC's Today in New York: Video Games With A Humanitarian Message
• 16-Aug: KQED Radio: Serious Games panel with Seggerman, Zimmerman, Burak, LaFond (30 minutes)
• 10-Aug: News 14 Carolina: Videogames promote social change (NY1 rebroadcast of 5 July)
• 7-Aug: Newsweek International: Games for Good (shortened print version of the July 11th Story)
• 26-Jul: Wisconsin Public Radio (Here on Earth): 1-hr radio show with James Paul Gee and Benjamin Stokes on 'games to change the world'
• 25-Jul: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation: Live Interview with Suzanne Seggerman
• 23-Jul: NYTimes: Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time
• 15-Jul: Globe and Mail: activism has evolved beyond sit-ins
• 11-Jul: Newsweek International: Gaming the Poor
• 7-Jul: Times Now: Games for Change
• 7-Jul: News8Austin: Videogames and Social Change (see NY1)
• 7-Jul: Forward: Clicking Toward Middle East Peace
• 5-Jul: Voice of America: Designers Tackle Real World Problems
• 5-Jul: NY1: Can Video Games Help Affect Social Change?
• 4-Jul: CGSociety: Games for Good
• 3-Jul: Zee News: Video games take on humanitarian twist
• 1-Jul: ReutersTV: Humanitarian Video Games
• 30-Jun: The World(PRI,BBC): Serious Gaming
• 30-Jun: BBC: Radio Scotland (interview)
• 30-Jun: BBC: Late Night Radio (interview)
• 30-Jun: BusinessWeek online: Getting Activist Video Games to Market
• 29-Jun: NYSun: Videogames Get Serious
• 29-Jun: MTV News: Can Social-Change Video Games Tackle Divorce, Poverty, Genocide?
• 29-Jun: Daily Telegraph: 'Ethical' computer games take on shoot-'em-up classics
• 28-Jun: NPR (Morning Edition): Video-Game Designers Target World Peace
• 27-Jun: Reuters (CNN.com, AlertNet, EpochTimes, Boston.com, Infoworld, Yahoo): Video game designers try to help save the world

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Annual Conference in June, 2006

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 05-08-06

Visit the conference website:

Registration is now live for our 2006 conference on "Social Change and Digital Games." The 3rd annual event will be co-hosted June 27th and 28th with the New School in New York City's Greenwich Village. Registration fees will increase after May 24th.

This event is the annual gathering for the exciting new movement using digital games to address the most pressing issues of our day. At the conference, expert practitioners -- academics, activists, non-profits -- will be called in to examine the impact of current games and preliminary and crucial work of building the field. Keynotes include Bob Kerrey, The New School President and former Senator from Nebraska, and best-selling author Steven Johnson of "Everything Bad Is Good For You." A showcase of the latest social change games will be open to the media at the Games Expo. Panel topics include Games for Global Peace, Creating a PBS for Games, Academic Evaluation Efforts, Recent Funding Initiatives, Health and Environmental Awareness Campaigns, and Guerrilla Nonprofit Games.

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Outcomes from GDC

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 03-22-06

While the GDC will continue through Friday, the Serious Games portion is complete. Here's a quick report with links to press received, an audio podcast of our panel, and photos from our "birds of a feather" session:

1. Press the article on our GDC panel by GameSpot (and even if GameSpot implies otherwise, Suzanne does know who made hidden agenda-- Jim Gasperini!)
2. Listen to the audio recording (zipped mp3) of the same panel.
3. Check out our photos:


G4C co-director Suzanne Seggerman addresses the main hall for the Serious Games Summit at GDC; fellow panelists Katie Salen, Carl Goodman and Lucy Bernholz (from left to right)


G4C board member Ian Bogost presents on Political/Activism Gaming


A sampling of some of the many folks attending the "birds-of-a-feather" gathering sponsored by G4C.

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Two conferences: March 20 (GDC/San Jose) & March 24 (N-TEN/Seattle)

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 03-07-06

UPDATED: photos, audio recordings, and press hits from the conferences are available if you 'read more' at the end of this post...

G4C will be at both the Game Developers Conference and the Nonprofit Technology Conference in late March:

1. GDC/San Jose Gathering: Meet-Up for Games for Change community. This birds-of-a-feather session will be hosted by the directors of Games for Change. Objectives are to plan out our upcoming national conference, network and share resources with our rapidly growing community. Monday, March 20, 1-1:50pm
2. GDC/San Jose Panel: Mass Audience Issues for Serious Games. As nearly the first panel in the two-day Summit on Serious Games that preceds the official GDC, we're gathering a high-profile crew that includes a funder's perspective (Connie Yowell/MacArthur Foundation), a museum perspective (Carl Goodman/Museum of the Moving Image), and one designer/academic (Katie Salen/Parsons School of Design). Moderated by G4C's own Suzanne Seggerman, the panel will explore how social change games require extra focus on our ability to reach game audiences that the industry has been unable to reach. This session answers key questions, such as: can we look at the elements other media have used when branching into new areas, such as documentary film or educational TV? Monday, March 20, 10:15-11:15am
3. N-TEN/Seattle At a panel of the Nonprofit Technology Conference, G4C will present on Storytelling Strategies for Digital Communications using digital games alongside the creators of the Meatrix and Store Wars. Friday, March 24, 1:30-3pm

We hope to see you there! Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Reporting Back: Panel at Annual Serious Games Summit in DC

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 02-22-06

We now have the full audio (MP3) from the November '05 panel that G4C hosted at the Serious Games Summit titled "Theory of Change: The Making of Good Social Issue Games." Overview: Many proponents of serious games believe they can affect positive social change, but to claim success, one must be able to evaluate impact. Business owners, foundations and nonprofits often use a "theory of change" (TOC) to articulate what's behind their social change design. Thus, a special focus of the panel will be discussing how TOC principals can form the basis of successful non-profit game design. The panel consider several TOC approaches through the perspectives of varied panelists. (More detail is available on the panel's description on the Summit site.) Speakers included:

• Moderator: Mario Armstrong (National Public Radio)
• Suzanne Seggerman (Games for Change)
• Benjamin Stokes (Games for Change, NetAid)
• Barry Joseph (Global Kids)
• Catherine Herdlick (gameLab)

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Call out for feedback

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 11-08-05

We're now gathering all articles, photos and quotes! Send what you've got to our conference email address (g4cacteva@wwwac.org). All conference attendees should receive our survey via email by Wednesday, November 15th -- let us know if you haven't seen this yet!

General update: We're regrouping, post-conference, and doing a bunch of assessment. Soon we'll start sharing some of the results and articles from the survey and beyond! Stay tuned...

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Registration Open for our 2005 Conference!

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 09-14-05

Click on the logo at left to find out the details and register today for our 2005 national conference on Social Change through Digital Games.
We invite designers, nonprofits, academics, foundations, government offices, artists and more to attend for two fantastic days of networking, learning and collaboration. Save $50 if you register before September 30th...
Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Article Published: Overview of Serious Games for Global Educators

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 08-23-05

The UK-published Development Education Journal recently asked one of our co-founders to write a theme article on "Games and Global Education" for their June 2005 edition. We�re now pleased to offer the article online. Two aspects may interest readers here: (1) the overview of digital games for those doing civic education, (2) advice on collaboration to increase impact for the Serious Games sector. A PDF of the article can be downloaded at the top of the following URL: www.netaid.org/go/games

At a larger level, traditional journals are clearly beginning to take games seriously. In this case, the flagship publication of a leading global education journal considered digital games worth recruiting for its special issue on technology in education. The article itself is largely a product of the Serious Games community: it was authored by G4C co-founder Benjamin Stokes and acknowledgements also go out to Dave Rejeski (G4C co-founder) and David Williamson Shaffer (UW-Madison).

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Salon Report on “Behind the Scenes of The UN WFP’s Food Force” (#4, July 20th)

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 07-25-05

This salon’s photos and audio are available online.

Who says games are not serious? This month�s Games for Change Salon took a peek at The United Nations World Food Program�s (WFP) FoodForce Game. We welcomed Trevor Rowe, North American Spokesperson for the World Food Program�s (who discussed the game and its impact in promoting awareness of the WFP  and hunger worldwide.

Suzanne Seggerman of WebLab welcomed the large group in attendance with a special thank you to the Fund for the City of New York, who generously hosted the event. The WFP  FoodForce Game initiative is of particular interest to Games for Change as we draw our members from over 20 countries and because poverty is one of the most significant social issues of our time. 

According to Mr. Rowe, unlike most UN agencies, WFP does most of its work in the field. The WFP is the world�s largest humanitarian agency, supports 82 countries and fed over 100 million people last year alone! Hunger remains the #1 health threat around the world, and more die each year due to hunger than malaria tuberculosis and HIV/Aids combined. And yet Mr. Rowe commented: �hunger remains a difficult issue for people to focus on.�

Mr. Rowe cited a number of challenges facing the WFP in promoting awareness of hunger. How can the WFP promote awareness without provoking guilt or leaving people feeling affronted or offended? Can they develop support for action above and beyond awareness? The WFP also had a goal of creating a more long-term constituency among youth ages 9-13. And finally, the WFP wanted to make the game as real as possible to expose players to the real decisions and experiences the WFP encounters.

The solution for the WFP involved an active game experience where the real problems facing the WFP on a daily basis are solved. The series of steps in the game included a) an assessment of resources and funding required; b) a view into the hard choices the agency makes with balancing nutrition/diet against supplies; c) the logistics of air dropping food; d) the challenge of delivering food across rough and hostile terrain; and e) a review of the long-term initiatives that the WFP undertakes to not just feed, but rehabilitate the countries through rebuilding roads and schools, replanting, etc.

The result was very successful with 1 million downloads in its first 10 weeks following launch. The FoodForce Game game was also the #1 download on Apple�s website for the first 2 weeks, and in total has been downloaded by 1.5 to 2 million people. The future plans for the FoodForce Game game include promoting its use in schools and releasing it in other languages.

Benjamin Stokes of NetAid demonstrated the game and highlighted its success despite the large download size (220MB), commenting that non-profits should look at downloading as an alternate (and inexpensive) method of distribution. Mr. Stokes also commented on the use of a �Trust Network� to distribute the game. �You have to play it to understand it,� Mr. Stokes noted in comparing the cinematic elements of the game to the interactive components. He noted how the game mixed expository information into the actual game play, reinforcing the message the WFP intended to get across, and that game play was very easy to pick up, with instructions lasting only 5 to 10 seconds.

During the Q&A section, one person suggested tying the game into real-time hunger/health data provided by Bloomberg. The game reportedly cost several hundred thousand dollars to produce. According to Mr. Rowe, the large audience was in part due to very solid PR efforts, and that the national debate regarding video game usage and a natural interest on the part of the media fed the publicity.

When asked about establishing a deeper moral connection with its users beyond just awareness, Mr. Rowe commented: �It�s difficult to establish a moral connection - however you do create a certain level of understanding and empathy for the process of solving this particular problem - there are not just a lot of faceless people out there that are hungry. You�ll walk away knowing that you can do something about it, because you�ve done it. And so the next time someone says you can�t do something about hunger, you�re going to say �well, maybe you can.��

Benjamin Stokes distributed an article that he authored on Serious Games that explores: �three educational opportunities in games - raising public awareness, affecting behavior and empowering learners � and discusses collaborative ways to move the agenda forward.� The article is slated to appear in the June 2005 edition of The Development Education Journal .

Barry Joseph of GlobalKids announced new support from Microsoft for a new initiative. According to Mr. Joseph, the �After School Games Program� will �work with students after school to teach them not only GlobalKids leadership skills but also game design skills. Learn how to combine the two together. And we�ll be working closely with GameLab to produce the game with the students each year.�

Thanks to those who attended, to Mr. Trevor Rowe for his presentation on the WFP’s  FoodForce Game and to The Fund for the City of New York for hosting the event.

Reminder to all about the upcoming Games for Change Conference scheduled for October 21st/22nd in New York.

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Please join us for our next Salon on Wednesday, July 20th!

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 07-11-05

The Games for Change Summer Salon:
Behind the Scenes of The UN’s Food Force

THE EVENT:
- Meet the UN World Food Programme’s North America spokesman.
- Learn how they made their game and what they hope to accomplish.
- Discover how a game about air dropping food rations reached over 1,000,000 players within two months.
- Introduce yourself to others in the G4C community.
- Enjoy the drinks, light fare and networking opportunities.
- Show your own game during the cocktail hour.

THE PLACE:
Wednesday, July 20
6 - 8pm
Fund for the City of NY
121 Avenue of the Americas (@ Broome Street) 6th Floor (for directions: http://fcny.org/portal.php/fcny/directions/)
As sponsored by the Fund for the City of New York, the Games 4 Change salons are always free to attend.

RSVP (requested not required) to rsvpgamesforchange@yahoo.com so we have enough food and drink.  Thanks.

THE HOSTS:
Games for Change is a non-profit organization working to bring together non-profits and their partners in industry, academia and the arts, to explore the use of digital games for social change.  G4C is an off-shoot of the Serious Games Initiative, which is focused on uses for games in exploring management and leadership challenges facing the public sector. 

Please feel free to forward this announcement to other people and lists you think would be interested.

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Reporting Back: at Madison for the GLS Conference / June 23-24

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 06-25-05

As described earlier, we hosted a luncheon this past week on the topic of "facilitating multi-sector partnerships around research, publicity and game development" at the GLS Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. The conference drew more than 300 attendees for a fantastic and diverse look into learning and digital games.

The luncheon was attended by foundations, reporters, game designers, teachers, nonprofits, researchers and others. More than four discussion tables tackled how collaboration between fields can overcome mutual challenges. Moderated by Benjamin Stokes, the event built on G4C's earlier presence at GDC and E3 to expand our fledgling community.

A nice bonus was a front-page article mentioning Games For Change in the Wisconsin State Journal which described our work in "bringing together nonprofits and others across the country to develop games that create awareness and action on social problems ranging from hunger to AIDS" (too bad they didn't mention G4C's name!).

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Join us in Madison for the GLS Conference / June 23-24

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 06-20-05

We're hosting a luncheon on the opening day of the GLS Conference in Madison on June 23rd. The focus will be on how G4C can facilitate multi-sector partnerships around research, publicity and game development. The session will be moderated by Benjamin Stokes of NetAid. Benjamin will also be presenting a workshop on intersections between Games and Service Learning. Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Our Party at the Education Arcade—and Next Salon Preview

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 05-20-05

Suaznne just wanted to drop in and give you all an update on G4C’s recent events:

First, welcome to the many new members who’ve just joined after our various West Coast activities - we now have members in almost 20 countries (welcome Finland and Taiwan - our newest additions!) and almost all 50 states (hello Hawaii!)

Our most recent event was Monday night’s Education Arcade party, an information session and social hour at the poolside bar of the Figueroa Hotel, a block from the Education Arcade. Co-hosted by G4C, Serious Games and our new LA coordinator, Celia Pearce, it was a great evening. Barry Joseph and I, G4C co-founders, spoke about G4C activities, Celia spoke about the Buckminster Fuller Insititute’s game project Spaceship Earth, and Ben Sawyer filled us in on Serious Games activities. There were at least 60 people there throughout the evening, and we welcomed visits from people who have been inspiring us with their work and vision over the years (Brenda Laurel, Henry Jenkins and others.) No camera, alas. And if you’d like to be involved in the LA group, please email: celia@cpandfriends.com

Last week in LA, Celia Pearce oversaw a game design charette for the Buckminster Fuller Institute’s game, Spaceship Earth, a social issue game project that is inspired by Bucky Fuller’s World Game. There were 20 people involved from various fields related to games, technology and earth issues in the charette and we welcome them onto the list as well.

July 20th is our next Salon in NYC - it will be “new members night” where everyone present will have a chance to speak for a few minutes about who they are and what they are working on, as well as we will feature a brief social issues/non-profit game presentation - details forthcoming. Please join us if you can.

Best wishes at the onset of summer!

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Salon Report on “Games in Culture” (#3, May 4th)

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 05-15-05

[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 agendas (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 Sims 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]

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Join us for our next Salon on Wednesday, May 4!

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 04-21-05

Games For Change Salon Series
3rd Feature: Games in Culture
6-8pm on Wednesday, May 4, 2005
Fund for the City of New York
121 6th Avenue @ Broome Street
6th floor

** Games For Change brings together non-profits and their partners to explore the use of digital games to advance organizational mission and societal change.

OVERVIEW
This bi-monthly discussion series brings together key individuals and organizations interested in discussing the use of digital games to achieve non-profit missions. The focus for each evening will be a presentation or discussion with several noteworthy speakers followed by a lively social hour.

May 4. Moderated by game designer and author Eric Zimmerman, this panel will explore the cultural and social aspects of games in our society. The discussion will center on the unique status of games within culture, the ways that games are similar to and different than other forms of media, entertainment, and popular culture, and what all of this has to say about how games can be used for social change.

Speakers:
- McKenzie Wark, New School media studies professor
- Karen Sideman, Game designer & former Creative Director at Sesame Workshop Online
- Carol Stakenas, Program Officer, International Center for Tolerance Education

Please feel free to forward this announcement to other people and lists you think would be interested.

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Second Games for Change Salon a hit (March 29)

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 04-21-05

[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 NetAid was 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]

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Mention in The Nation’s weblog

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 04-05-05

We're pleased to see the editor of The Nation magazine highlight the G4C community in the last paragraph of her weblog, Editor's Cut (www.thenation.com/edcut/index.mhtml?pid=2302). The article also features quotes by co-founder Dave Rejeski and game examples featured in some of our recent discussions. Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Success at GDC and in San Francisco

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 03-25-05

Following two days of events in San Francisco, Games For Change (G4C) organizers believe they may have reached a new tipping point in activity and external interest. A new Bay Area chapter has emerged, volunteer groups are cohering around specific projects, and new partners are directly approaching the group. The recent San Francisco events, held in and around the Moscone Center on March 7th and 8th, occurred both independently and within the Serious Games Summit (~500 attendees) as part of the larger Game Developers Conference (~10,000 attendees).

The G4C group's activities in San Francisco show the interest the group is garnering in the larger Serious Games community. On Monday March 7th, the Serious Games Summit started and included Suzanne Seggerman and Barry Joseph (Global Kids) leading a G4C luncheon meeting. Attended by over sixty people, the working luncheon introduced conference participants to the mission and work of G4C. One outcome was a list of key challenges that will need to be addressed to develop nonprofit serious games (to be posted shortly).

That same day, at the invitation of the conference organizers, G4C convened a roundtable discussion on "How Games Benefit the Public-At-Large." Moderated by Benjamin Stokes (NetAid), the 40-person group sought to integrate the perspectives of game developers with their partners to brainstorm untapped opportunities for serious games that might benefit the public good (results to be posted shortly).

By contrast, the G4C event on Tuesday night was open-invite beyond the conference and served as the first West Coast Information Session. Over 35 people attended, from D.C., New York, several Midwest states, Washington and, of course, California. Participants developed topics for the upcoming conference, discussed how to improve the online community, and debated member projects long into the night. Hors d'oeuvres were served.

The launch of a new Bay Area chapter of G4C was one vital outcome of recruiting at the Tuesday night event. The chapter's steering committee of five will be led by Doug Nelson of Kinection. Their activities, including West Coast Salons, will greatly add to the larger G4C community both on and offline.

The three San Francisco events detailed above help show how much G4C has accomplished in the past year. At the start of 2004, G4C was born via conference calls that led to a conference in June. Today G4C runs its own website, independent listserv, bi-monthly salon series and national conference focusing on social issues and nonprofit partnerships. Volunteer groups have already formed and are working to organize the upcoming conference, a series of case studies and future salons. Volunteers are also working to start up chapters in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Join us at these March events

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 02-16-05

Lunch as part of SG-GDC (March 7th): At the Serious Games Preconference to GDC in San Francisco. Come learn more about what we have achieved in the past year, network with other practitioners, and learn what GFC can mean for you and your work. Co-moderated by Suzanne Seggerman, coordinator of GFC, and Barry Joseph, director of Global Kids' Online Leadership Program. Lunch provided on a first come, first serve basis. Note that you must register for the pre-conference to attend.

Bay Area Happy Hour Information & Networking Session (March 8th): Want to connect to the Games4Change movement in the Bay Area? Come to this free event (not connected to the conference). We're going to host an information and networking session on Tuesday evening, March 8th. The first half hour will be for beginners only, and then we'll kick off an open session for all. However, momentum in the Bay Area will ONLY happen with volunteers helping bring in NGOs, game developers, academics, etc. Can you think how we might get the right NGOs to attend? Or who we should talk to? Would you like to attend? Contact Benjamin Stokes at 212 537 0520 and we'll let you know the specifics.

Evening Salon Discussion Featuring Two Case Studies (March 29th): We'll try to give everyone a sense of how our emerging sector already operates by contrasting two very different game business models and desired outcomes. Alexander Kopelman of Girls Incorporated will present TeamUp and Benjamin Stokes of NetAid will present Peter Packet. A discussion will follow. These two case studies are part of a larger initiative by Games For Change to publish case studies of relevant games to our membership. To attend, email Suzanne Seggerman for details.

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Games For Change mentioned in NYC Council Hearing

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 02-14-05

Today, the City Council’s Committee on Technology in Government held a public hearing: “Oversight: Improving Participatory Democracy Through Municipal Cable Television.” You might wonder what this might have to do with online games?

Well, one of the main questions pertained to the stations’ websites and how they could be used to engage and inform the public. One of GFC’s founders, Barry Joseph from Global Kids, was invited to present. He spoke about a number of areas, such as online dialogues, but addressed games and our movement as well.

The following is from his spoken testimony:

For three years, Global Kids has been exploring what has come to be called, “Serious Games,” the use of online games as a tool for more than just entertainment. More specifically, we have been a leader with other like-minded non-profits in New York City interested in using online games as a tool for achieving our social mission. This emerging organization, recently named Games for Change, held its first conference last year and has recently begun a bi-monthly salon series for non-profits and their partners. Why games? According to The Entertainment Software Association, half of all Americans play computer and video games, with women making up the second largest group of gamers. Games are steadily becoming a dominant way that people spend their leisure time, often stealing time away from traditional media, like television. But games need not be simply for fun. Global Kids is currently developing two separate games as a way to reach youth. One, the Profiler,  will be what is known as a casual game, a fast, action-packed game that will educate its players about airport profiling in a post-9.11 world. The second, the Public Policy Slam, will be what is known as a massively-multiplayer online game, engaging and informing youth around the country about significant public policy issues. Gotham Gazette has been a leader in developing inexpensive, civic-oriented games. Here are a few recent examples. The descriptions are taken from their website. * The New York City Budget Game:  In an effort to close the city’s $3.8 billion deficit, public officials have been playing the usual budget games - laying off workers, raising taxes, and threatening to close firehouses and zoos. Now with our interactive NYC Budget Game, you can play too. You spend the money. You make the cuts. You raise and lower the taxes. * Plan Your Future Park  Our newest interactive game lets you plan your own park, making choices that communities all over the city have been facing. * Breakdown  New Yorkers rarely think about the systems that keep the city running, until something breaks down. Now, you can take a system-by-system look at what keeps us wired, watered, and flushed: play Breakdown!, our newest interactive game, and use your knowledge to save the city from kaput. Recommendation: Integrate “serious games” into the Council 51 website as a way to attract new users to the site while educating them about important civic issues. Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

First salon a success (including pictures!)

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 01-13-05

The results are in: our first Salon, held two days ago, was a success. Highlights include:

• 50 attendees from all over, both near (NYC) and far (Boston, St. Paul, Miami, & Los Angels). Many arrived early and stayed late; maybe it was the great food? Grin.
• Diverse backgrounds: mostly nonprofits, with a good blend of industry, academia, artists, media and consultants.
• The speakers were fantastic - inspiring and practical.
  Franklin Madison, Jr., the Technology Program Director at the Industrial and Technology Assistance Corporation, opened the presentations by discussing various avenues for securing funding from Federal agencies.
  Kevin Duggan, an independent consultant specializing in planning and development for individual artists and nonprofit cultural organizations, follow by discussing his work with artists and mediamakers as innovators in the use of technology for social change.
  Finally, Aldrin Rafael Bonilla, the Director of the Community Technology Innovations at the Fund for the City of New York, (and understudy for Mary McCormick, who was unable to attend), described various projects by the Fund which employed community-based technology to meet social needs.
  The short presentations were followed by an active Question and Answer period.
  
  CHECK OUT: We've posted some photos and audio excerpts will be coming soon.
What's next?
• To grow, people are pitching in to help out - organizing future salons, assemble case studies, help with outreach, etc. Join the listserv to learn more in an upcoming email.
• If you attended, help us spread the word by sending us feedback (or add a comment below).
• A possible event in San Francisco in March, perhaps in conjunction with GFC's presence at the Serious Games pre-summit to GDC
• The next Salon!
Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Games For Change in the Village Voice

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 01-13-05

In this week’s Village Voice Educational supplement, Games For Change’s work with online gaming got a mention in “Game On! Will more professors develop video games for their classes?”

...Although New York schools haven’t designed many curricular games, the city has pushed ahead in a slightly different field-“meaningful content” games, which promote social and political awareness. Last June, a trio of New York-based nonprofits (NetAid, a U.N. organization that fights world poverty; Global Kids, Inc., a leadership group for urban youth; and Web Lab, a new-media think tank) hosted a conference called “Serious Issues, Serious Games” to explore ways of using digital playthings to “advance society.” Out of the conference emerged Games for Change, an interest group that has already worked with a number of pristine simulations where “winning” involves successfully dealing with issues like AIDS, poverty, and racial profiling.

For educators, games are not only a catchy way to appeal to the otherwise bored and twitchy, but also a concrete embodiment of pedagogical theories about interactive, student-based learning. Unlike the usual proponents of vague and utopian teaching methods, those intellectually invested in video games feel a sense of inevitability about their project: Games have already outsold the Hollywood box office. According to Suzanne Seggerman, co-director of Games for Change, they will easily worm their way into the academy, just as film did 30 years ago.

“Using video games as a learning tool is newborn, squirmy, and barely formed,” she says. “But it’s only a matter of time. Talk to me in 10 years. We’ll all be playing.”


The rest can be found here.

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

First in Salon Series: “The Untapped Resources of New York City”

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 12-18-04

6-8pm on Tuesday, January 11, 2005

This new quarterly discussion series will bring together key individuals and organizations interested in discussing the use of digital games to achieve non-profit missions. The focus for each evening will be a guided and provocative discussion inspired by 2-3 key speakers and followed by a lively social hour. The salons will be held at a spacious SoHo loft, with drinks and hors d’oeuvres provided.  The series launches on the heels of our first national conference this summer.

EVENT DETAILS
Convened by the Games For Change steering committee, the first salon will feature three speakers and will gather together a group of 30-50 people from academia, industry and the nonprofit sectors to explore digital game partnership opportunities within New York City.  We’ll focus on the intersection of social issues, technology and innovation. RSVP required.  6-8pm, Tuesday January 11th, 2005, near Lafayette and Bond Street (exact address available upon RSVP to Suzanne Seggerman).

THE GUEST SPEAKERS
High profile in their respective fields, the speakers are drawn from beyond the Serious Games movement to encourage broader perspectives and community.  Our first salon will feature the speakers below.
* Mary McCormick is the President of the Fund for the City of New York, a private operating foundation established by the Ford Foundation in 1968 that focuses on civic innovation and implementation.
* Kevin Duggan is an independent consultant specializing in planning and development for individual artists and nonprofits, and a former Senior Program Officer for Services and Technology at the New York Foundation for the Arts.
* Franklin Madison, Jr., recently named one of Crain’s Top 100 individuals in technology in New York City, is responsible for the strategic development and implementation of new programs and grants to assist NYC high-tech firms.

Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Serious Issues, Serious Games: The Non-Profit Perspective

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 10-10-04

Our first annual conference was held on June 8, 2004 at the New York Academy of Sciences, New York City. The aim of the conference was to "to bring together non-profits, foundations and game developers to explore the use of digital games to advance organizational mission and societal change." The conference's primary goal was to mobilize support for a medium with growing importance for nonprofits, and to bring together a small group of practitioners to begin to discuss a long-term strategy for the larger non-profit community and its partners. As with Games for Health, those interested in the non-profit perspective are forming a community of peers with our assistance. This new group is working on non-profit organization specific missions, long-term goals, and communication tools like a listserv. The exploratory conference was organized by a steering committee drawn from several NY-based non-profits: Barry Joseph of Global Kids, Suzanne Seggerman of Web Lab, Benjamin Stokes of NetAid and Thomas Lowenhaupt, with generous help and guidance from Dave Rejeski of the Woodrow Wilson Center and financial support from the Richard Lounsberry Foundation.

Many related items are now online:

• Our press release
• Conference materials: agenda, participant bios, game descriptions
• Selected photos
• Additional press coverage
Continue reading the rest of this post.
 

Launch of Games for Change Online

Posted by Benjamin Stokes on 10-02-04

With Games for Change, those interested in the non-profit perspective are forming a community comprising a distinct off-shoot of the broader Serious Games Initiative.  This new group has their own specific mission and long-term goals.  New online resources include:

*** Sign up for our independent listserv (known as SIGSIG)

*** Contribute to our wiki [outdated] for knowledge sharing

Continue reading the rest of this post.

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