G4C Features

 Subscribe to G4C Features RSS

Previous entry: G4C 101 Workshop Roundup
Next entry: G4C Festival Day 2 Summary

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.

---

Comments

---

Submit A Comment

We would love to have you add in the discussion. Please submit your content to our editor:

Name (public):
Email (required but private, only used if our editors need to contact you):
Comments: (We will automatically remove html codes.)
	Remember my personal information
	Notify me of follow-up comments?
Please enter the word you see in the image:
	(Warning: You will NOT be warned if our spam filters delete your comment. Cutting and pasting tends to confuse our spam filters, so always keep a copy. If your comment passes the spam test, you will be shown a brief "Thank You" message after hitting the Submit button, otherwise you will be returned to this page with your comment gone and no warning. Only comments that pass the spam test will be emailed to our editors for approval and posting. Contact our editors using the link in the footer if you have a problem.)