Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media

Get Well Gamers Foundation Is Seeking Donations of Game Systems in Good Condition

Get Well Gamers brings video games systems and games to children's hospitals by collecting used game systems and other donated product and sends them children's programs at hospitals.  Video games are an effective and proven pain management tool and provide needed entertainment during long hospital stays.  The organization was founded by Ryan Sharpe who spent a number of days in his childhood in a hospital ward.   The organization currently serves dozens of children's hospitals across the U.S. through a donation network

According to a post on the Serious Games list serv from Ben Sawyer, Ryan presented at Games for Health last year and he is an expert in improving hospital life with games then Ryan.  Currently, researching and testing how to properly waterproof various portable game systems so they can be used in mist tents which are necessary for recovering from severe burns.

If you have stocks of new product, or used systems in good condition that you would like to donate contact Get Well Gamers.  They also accept cash donations.

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Anyone Going to Games for Change?

I'm moderating a mixed reality panel at Games For Change next week.  Who is going to be there?  If you're thinking about, go for it!

Games for Change: June 11-12th

Last year, I attended the Games for Change Conference and lived blogged it. (here's my blog posts)  So, I'm delighted to post this announcement for this year's Games for Change - and guess what?  I'm on a panel with Susan Tenby of TechSoup and Evonne Heyning from Amoration Studios about Nonprofits in Secondlife.   For this panel, I'm contributing a community wiki about the topic here.

Here is the official announcement:

Games for Change is proud to announce that registration is now open for the Fourth Annual Games for Change Festival, to be held in New York City, June 11-12, 2007!

As one of last year’s attendees, you know all the exciting interactions that come out of this Festival, and we would love to see you again this year.  We have two days of exciting panels and speakers planned, including keynotes by Chris Melissinos, Chief Gaming Officer, Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Allison Fine, author of Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age.

The Games Expo, sponsored by Microsoft, will offer the opportunity to experience many of the latest games first-hand.  Check out the website for all the latest updates on the continually expanding program

Early Registration for the Festival offers a significant discount till the end of April.  Sign up now at Don’t miss out on this opportunity to discuss the latest in Social Gaming and interact with your peers – academics, activists, non-profits, funders – everyone will be on hand for the only festival dedicated to this exciting new movement!  Come join us!

Win a Sony PS3 and Support Young Homeless People from the UK

Last week I wrote about a virtual homeless teenager in Second Life who raising awareness of the plight of homeless teens in Spain. 

Nick Booth from the UK is asking for help in promoting an internet UK-based fundraiser. Participants who enter here can win a Playstation 3 from Dixons and have their £1 text or phone entrance fee go to help The Foyer Foundation, a nonprofit that works with homeless young people. 

Nick, who loves to experiment for good causes, is hoping to use some web2.0 tools to he word through the gaming community by using Digg and the ps3 tag. Since PS3s are impossible to find at this point, this may be one of the few ways left for gamers to get one.   It isn't just self either, the charity will benefit and be able to help a homeless young person.

Check out Nick's post and let's send a little blog buzz his way.   I'll also forward his post to some of the gamers I know by using 06-g4c tag and forwarding it to the games for change list.

UNICEF launches online Swahili game for HIV prevention

Here is an example of a video game for social marketing (what Nedra Weinreich blogs about, not social networking) 

UNICEF launched its first interactive video game in Swahili that empowers young people to make good life choices about and prevent HIV.  The game, called ‘Ungefanyaje’ or ‘What would you do?’ in Swahili, takes the player through a series of relationship-based
scenarios that emphasize the importance of HIV prevention and testing.

Here's more from the press release:

“Translating the game into Swahili makes it accessible to East African adolescents and young people,” says s of Youth  Coordinator Amber Oliver.  “By speaking openly about the threat that HIV and AIDS poses to young people, we can help give them the knowledge they need to keep them safe from infection.” 

Although prevention is essential to half the spread  of HIV/AIDS, an alarming 80 per cent of all young people still don’t know how to protect themselves from the virus.  Sub-Saharan Africa has been especially hard-hit by the epidemic.  “It is estimated that of the 2.3 million children  under 15 living with HIV, two million are in sub-Saharan Africa,” says Oliver.  “Reaching young people with prevention education and services is a crucial step  towards an AIDS-free generation.”

An Eco-Themed Video Game To Teach Young People about Global Warming

via Ben Stokes from Games For Change comes a pointer to an article from Plenty Magazine called "Just Push Play."  It is about an eco-themed video game that is helping the PlayStation generation understand global warming. 

Developed to teach Australian and U.K. students about environmental issues, Adventure Ecology is one example of a growing field of “serious” video games that raise awareness about issues like poverty and international strife, and help players assess strategies for solving them.   

Reading the Teacher's section and Ben's analysis:

It’s tough to teach interdependencies using linear media like books,” Stokes says. “But games, by their nature, are interactive systems. Our choices have consequences, like they do in real life.”

This is definitely one computer game that I'll allow my kids to play and some of it is available free on the web.   

Here's a description of the game play:

Students ages nine and up embark on virtual missions instead of listening to rote lesson plans. Before starting the game, each player takes a test that assesses her learning style; the game is then tailored to her strengths (visual learners encounter more graphics, while wordsmiths get scrolling text). Activities may include preventing deforestation, scoping out alternative fuel strategies, or convincing a clothing company to sell eco-friendly duds. As they play, gamers take quizzes to demonstrate their grasp of important concepts, accumulating points that let them take on new missions with bigger challenges.

Youth Connection Session at Games 4 Change Conference

Notes from live blogging.  All the usual disclaimers apply - typos, grammar, etc.

Youth Connection, Part I: Field Building with University Students Moderated by Katie Salen (Parsons, the New School of Design)

Description: Aside from creating "future leaders," let's talk about what University students are already contributing to social change gaming by creating a new kind of gaming environment. Take a peek into the hotbed of open prototyping, game jams, and mobile media experiements, then consider how schools might start to build social change into games studies curriculum.
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Katie Salen Parsons  (She co-wrote the book Rules of Play)
We're facilitating a process of games versus making games.

Games are made of up of rules - what you can or can't do in a game.  After specific restraints comes play.  The interplay between the rules and free play.

Dance Game - step on the correct arrow on the beat.  Through play, the rules are transformed.  They make up improvisational dancing.  What you do inbetween the beats is up to you.  That's where dancing takes place.

Gaming is a literacy of transgression. 
Subvert the rules
explore the limits of system
propose alternate responses

Great skills for social change.  Gaming is testing ideas, proposing solutions, and moving through the system. 

Gaming is about questioning everything.

Education is a context for a change.    When the students have a change to choose the games, they most often relate to an actvist issues.

Games examples:
Identity and social clicks in high school
Globalization - Sim game about you could plounder a developing country
Panchatantra - a board game.  A way to keep alive the ancient tales of India and storytelling in India.  Kids can go online an build stories.  Kids are collaboratively working together to build a tale.   Did the prototyping with kids.  Important to test.

Gaming is literacy.  How is the notion of gaming and practice of game part of a larger system.

Magic circle - the thing you step into.  A transformative experience.  You are able to think about things differently.  The magic circle is a territory.  What kind of change might be happening in the game?  How can we design for instances of change around and outside the game. 

The game system:
-in game
-around game
-outside game

Ecology of play.

Outside game:  Gaming as a global experience.  Our responsibility as global citizens.  Games are examples of global citizens.  The reach.  They have great currency as ambassadors.

A commitment to creating access - if we want to change game design.  We have to change access.  Not just a question of who makes games, but why certain people don't play.  Not true that girls don't play games.   

Researcher working with kids disabilities.   Discovered that the kids weren't playing because of the design.  Looked at this question about who isn't playing.   

Scholarships, Role Models (more women making games)

How to build change:
design games
build tools to allow others to design games (example - funded by MacArthur - game to allow kids to design games)
design as

make-a-game.nl

Bridge Change
Parson's just starting. Prototyping, evaluation, and learning lab - partnering with the games 4 change.  If you have an idea for a game, the students would create a prototype.  Rapid prototyping to get the field going.

How can we facilitate change?
defining/refining research agenda -
What constitues a good social change practice?  We know what makes a good game.  How to make the two things come together.
Strategic partnerships:  Who are you working with? 
Internship Program
Competition -
Princess - a feminist perspective in games.  Why is the woman always having to be saving?  In this game, the woman is the hero.   The history of gaming.

Designing Change?
What does it mean to design change?  How can this group push the edges of that in a university context.  Students are already activists.

Questions Teacher's College - Course on Social Change - research available.

-------------------------      
Youth Connection, Part II: Reaching New Audiences and Distribution Channels around the K-12 Education System Andreas Ua'Siaghail (Pax Warrior/23 YYzee), Barry Joseph (Global Kids)
          
Barry gave an engaging presentation on two game programs where kids are designing games and Global Kids Island on Second Life.  His presentation included video clips and he's a very engaging speaker - but a fast talker.  Faster than I can type. I hope I can find some of the video documentation online because it tells the story much better than I can do here in text.  Their programs have been well documented and evaluated and all is available online.  http://www.holymeatballs.org

Barry is also a new parent.  He shared an analogy between learning to be a parent and the learning in a game.

Idealware Blogging Report

Laura Quinn
Originally uploaded by cambodia4kidsorg.

I ran into Laura Quinn from idealware.org at the games expo at the end of the first day of the Games 4 Change Conference in NYC.   Laura was late getting to the conference because she was putting the finishing touches on the blogging report due out at the end of the week.

Educating To Mobilize the Masses

Educating to Mobilize the Masses David Williamson Shaffer (UW-Madison), Doug Nelson (Doorknocker Simulation/ Kinnection), Nelson Layag (CompassPoint Nonprofit Services)
          
How can organizations educate their masses for door-to-door canvassing, fundraising, or advocacy? Often the effective practices are well documented, but the novices -- who are often in the majority -- lack both the core civic skills and the confidence for independent experiential learning. We'll explore how games can scale up learning to build capacity for thousands of grassroots organizations.

-----------------
I missed a lot the first presenter's piece, but got the end here:

Ways of knowing and Ways of doing - reflection in action.  Someone who takes action and reflect on it.  The cycles get closer together until the thinking while doing happen at the same time.  We can create a game based on these concepts and build epistemic games.  Example - Urban Science -- example of game that teaches hwo to do urban planning.  Creative solutions to complex problems.

They receive a directive from the mayor that a street needs to be redesign.  The players conduct a site visit to understand the problem from the point of view of people who use the street everyday. Complex problem dealing with state street.  They use a model where they can change the zoning based on the issues they learned about.  They produce a model that shows the consequences of the proposed change. 

We're interested in the results - transfer scenarios. We ask them to solve a problem with the lens of an urban planner.  What should a fiction town do if they had too much garbage?  They did before/after questions - what the kids suggested before they played the game and after.  The answers after gave them more analysis.

Epistemic games - recreates ways of thinking.

The way the games are built - we study the epistemic framework.  For example, we look at how community organizers are successful in what they do?  The games let us think about the process of education of being a citizen in the world in a different way.      Epistemic framework let us think about the world in a different way and think about education and think about preparing people for the type of activicism.

How Computer Games Help Children Learn?  available for pre-order.  His book.
http://epistemicgames.org

Doug Nelson and Nelson Layag -- a game on community organizing

Gave an overview of the program goals and the five different methods for community organizing.  They focused on one outreach method - which was doorknocking.  Is there a way to use a game to train residents to go door-to-door effectively.  The intent was to get them to practice in a safe place.  They also wanted the tool to be customizable to a particular type of campaign.

Audience exercise:

Asked us to think about a shameful experience in the last 3-5 years and get in touch with the that feeling.
Ask for a volunteer to share that moment with the entire group
One person volunteered.
That's what you get when you ask people to do a doorknocking campaign - the level of discomfort you felt before is why it is so hard to get people to volunteer.

Huge drop out rate.  They don't learn the skills.  Can we create a playful practice environment and help them understand.

Funders, Compasspoint, Subject Matter Expert, and Kinection Game Design. 

The toolkit has three pieces:

• Web site
• Classroom curriculum - game intended to be used in the class for roleplaying exercise.
• Game Simulation

 - Identified the skills (8 skills) and created a cast of characters
- The game has a tutorial and exercise mode

Very simple game.  Not Sim Doorknocker...

Goal: To make it freely available and distributing it via the web.  Testing it with community organizations and get feedback on it.

Q&A:

Are there places where it is better to have live role plays versus the computer?

This is an 8 step process and there are no games for steps 4,5, and 6.   Sometimes live role plays are better than the computer role playing.   It is intended to be integrated with live training.  If you are a community organizer and can't get a big name trainer to help you, you can take this and work with the material. 

Can these games be provided in format that are more accessible than computer -- like cell phone?

Right using community technology centers for the location of the training.  The development costs on computer is lower than cell phone.  Then once we're ready to roll out on a larger scale, we'd look at cell phone.

What are some of things you think you could be doing better?

Reiterative process - build it.  If it doesn't work, revise it.   What do we have to do to recreate the ways that the skills are linked with values and knowledge.

Funding Perspectives: Games for Change

Funding Perspectives: New Initiatives Connie Yowell (MacArthur Foundation), Franklin Madison (ITAC), Chinwe Onyekere (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation), Jee Kim (Surdna Foundation); moderated by Suzanne Seggerman (Games for Change)             

Description
How can funders with a specific social goal ensure they get a useful game? What is drawing them to the new field of using games for real-world change? Foundations and other funders often develop long long-term strategies beyond specific games or programs; what can we learn from their research? Panelists will discuss their latest work and share insights and concerns as this field begins to take root.
---------------------------------------------------

Chinwe Onyekere, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

There isn't a lot of opportunities for funders to talk about why and how they got into this space and opportunities for collaboration.  Ben and Suzanne put together a private briefing.   They wanted to understand what other funders are doing; not  duplicate and get more strategic.  Opportunity to start a dialogue.  Opportunity to learn from experts.

Will be showing a video overview of Games for Health project.   Healthcare and video game industry don't usually talk to one another.  Went to the Hill.  Using their role as a convener to get a dialogue started.

Connie Yowell, MacArthur - Education Program

In terms of what foundation do and think about this space.  We learned from yesterday is that there are traditional - foundations that are based on dead money and work via board.   Some foundations have a live person whose money it is.  THen there are corporate foundations.  Different guidelines and approaches.  They read the game space differently.  The challenge to bring to board is different.  Her foundation board - they are all over 50 and have to be a translator in the space.

One of our added values is to ask the right question.  One of the questions -- kids are using digital media and using the technology and are kids learning differently because of digital media.  What does that mean for our organizations?  Policy?

Takeaways from meeting:

Foundations are looking to digital media to see how it enhances our existing work.   Not going to fund a game -- what is the relationship between games and learning.  We have set a path grantmaking along those lines.

The first grant was at Berkeley and USC.  Funded for three years - longitudal study on how kids are using digital media.  Want to go deeper than anecdote.  Doing it in the virtual world as well as real world.  Quantitative study on civic engagement.  If kids are engaged in media and games are they engaged in other ways?   Are these kids different?  The research is to find out.

A tradtional foundation likes to be involved in field building.  We launched a series in digital media and learning.  To map the baseline on core topics, with six editors.  There has to be a tradtional set of volumes --

To get people talking across disciplines and sectors:

Credibility
Identity
Ethnicity
Ecology of Games
Unintended Consequences
Civic Engagement

Will announce different topics.   Will have a public launch of the series in September - with online discussions with the authors.

Public conversation about what games mean and contribution to the general good.  Gave a grant to global kids.  Don't have enough kids talking themselves.  Global kids has been working with MacArthur to understand youth s as related digital media.  Written essays from kids.  Created an island in Second Life - to share the meaning of digital media in their lives.  Parrell conversations with kids and adult world around digital media.

Games space - partnership and how you think about partnership and developing your work.  University of Wisc. and Game Lab in NYC to develop a game for kids to be game designers.  Bigger purpose - kids to live a world that is designed.  Meta level of what the design process is.  Be active in that world versus responsive to what has been designed for them.

Henry Jenkins at MIT - and University of Wisc. to think about the broader statement of what you want to make?  What is the value of games to the social good?  How we measure social good is how we engage.  Incremental radicalism.  You don't have to be radical - and you have to get there in an incremental way.  We need low-hanging fruit.  We need to show that games are making a difference in concrete ways.  For example, the work from Hope Lab - evaluation of the results of their game.  Not to say that all games needs that type of evaluation, but you need a strategy and way of thinking of how you will show value for social good in long term and short term.

Here's the video about games for health.

What does your board not get about games?

They don't understand the connection to learning.  I've taken them on a journey of continuous learning.  We've had Ben and Susan come.  We've shown them clips.  When the board sees people like them interacting with the technology, helps get the interest.   They more examples they have to show, the more likely they will understand it.

Federal funders are looking at the metrics.

Are the metrics the traditonal metrics one might use in public health?

We're looking for that type of rigor.   That's the type of research helps build the evidence base.

How do you see the role foundations play in our efforts to build the field as compared to other roles?  How can foundations help aside from money?

The ability to create something out of it.  Something that they can count.  If you're going to get it into 300,000 hands to teach re: diabetes.   External education is important.

RWJF - we have a network of people doing amazing things.   We can connect people and use our rolodex and connect people.   

Convening role is important.  Also important on how to leverage the foundations - and that is to know your audience.  Speak the language of your audience.   What is important to the funder?

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Aldon Hynes: Games for Change IRC Channel

Aldon Hynes
Originally uploaded by cambodia4kidsorg.

The IRC Channel for the Games for Change Conference is here:
http://www.orient-lodge.com/index.php?q=node/view/581

Aldon Hynes set it up. He is sitting in front of me.

Peace Games & International Efforts

LIve blogging from the Serious Games Conference - usual disclaimers apply to typos, etc.  Will clean up later.
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Dick Cavett quote:  Does comedy on television lead to comedy in the streets?

Speakers:

Douglas Thomas, USC Center on Public Diplomacy
Hardy Merriman, International Center on Nonviolent Conflict
Stephen Friedman, MTV U

Douglas Thomas:

We're closet gamers.   We decided to ask Europeans who were playing the game whether or not they knew they were playing with Americans.  "Americans aren't that bad as you play with them."  Came to the idea that if people play together, they tend not to think of people as different nationalities.   They think of each other as gamers.  When they find out you are an American, there is a moment of cognitive disonance, but then they come to: "You're not so bad as an American."

The model of State Department's Cultural Exchanges.   These are powerful experiences.  Those people come back and have greater depth of understanding.

There are half of million people playing star wars galaxy.   This is a great place to do public diplomacy in the gaming world.  Do you we teach coders the basic tenets of public diplomancy or vice versa?   We put out a call and got a number of responses from game programmers.   We identified four finalists.  Three out of four of these were on Second Life.

Peacemaker was the first place winner.

We created an Island in Second Life to forward this agenda.  Next, we're going to centralized a database.  To get gamers to hook up and play.   We go to WOW server and get a group together.   Engage in some practices that overcome differences. 

Stephen Friedman - MTV U

We started with activism - pushing and questioning authority.   We decided to follow our artists and engage the audience on this issues.  We're working with most web savvy audience.  College students have led the fight on issues.  Activism has evolved beyond sit-ins.  How can we take it into the digital world.   We announced a contest to create a game to address issue in Sudan.  Darfur Is Dying was the result.

The founder and creator of game consulted people in Darfur.  More than the addictive nature of game, the action it can take. 700,000 have played the game.  Darfur is Dying was created at last year's GFC.

We're following up with a new game.  We're going to give out 10 $25K grants - one game in particular - University of Denver students created a game called Squeezed.  Glimpse into immigrant farm workers.  MMOG - users can compete selling produce.   First person pickers.  Hope is that game will give attention to ways of domestic food production, immigration, explotation.  Will debue in September.

Staying Alive:  Viral Video - preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS -- look for it in August.
Digital Incubator Content - ten grants broadband innovators.   Grants won't be capped at 25K.  Grants will inspire young people to create breathtaking games.  It's what rock and roll rebellion is all about.

Hardy Merriman - International Center on Nonviolent

Force more power - strategic nonviolent theory.   We do research in non-violent struggles - strikes, protests, etc.  A game on how to build a movement and be strategically planned.  A way to test strategies for nonviolent strategies and action for change.  We look at it as method.  How does it work for social change.  In the game, you are a strategist for a movement.  Meanwhile, the computer is running your opponent.  While you are trying to build your movement, the AI of the machine is looking for your weaknesses.  The AI is really smart.   His first game, his activist got locked up and thrown in jail.    Money went into the AI  how the computer thinks versus flashy graphics.   Wanted it to be relevant for activists.

There is a heavy investment to get to play the game.  There are about 50 different variables to base decisions.  Part of what people learn, what variables are important to pay attention to.  How to deal with this confusion of variables to make effective decisions.  The game shows you scenarios -- e.g. a dictatorship, corruption, back sliding democracy, ethnic minority, labor organizing, self-determination, and being in a democracy (not violently oppressed - get government to change its stance on the world).   The most value that will come out of this game, when people start designing their own scenarios.  They can enter their map, their country, airports, demographics, etc.

Technorati Tags: 06-g4c

Steven Johnson Key Note at Serious Games Conference

I'm live blogging from the Games for Change Conference in NYC.  The key note was delivered by Steven Johnson, author of "Everything Bad for You is Good."  In the book, he makes an argument for why playing digital games is good for their brains.

Susan Seggerman, co-founder of Games for Change, introduced Stephen with a great story.  They were presenting in Davos, Switzerland.  The first panel on video games at Davos.  "The best part of the conference was when he got in front of the crowd of CEOs of major tech companies and he stood up raised his hand - asked, "How do you feel about using games for educational purposes?"  Initial response was positive.   Bill Gates said, "This is one of the best books written."  Doesn't get better than that for an author.

His Talk

"The funny thing that having Bill Gates say he loves your book.  I thought he was my friend.  I went over to him afterwards and said Bill, thanks for the plug.  I was convinced he was going to invite me to his mansion to play games.  No he didn't!"

He started with a clip from The Colbert Report.  In Sims, you do household chores. "I think these kids are being played and you're getting them to take out the trash and I think its cool."

He mentioned that the game Civilization 4 came out since the book as published.  He uses it uses it as an example of experience of 15 year olds. He goes through the discussion boards and grabs some of the topics -- to give a sense of the gamer's debates.

• How do you guys control your workers?
• Is there a way of hindering the space race?
• Is it ever worth it not to build a shrine for your first great prophet?
• Beware of the sudden collapse experience?

He starts with how Lost gave us a control study with a comparison -  Gilligan's Island - to compare the complexity.  Lost is one of the first shows that has been structured as a game. 

He showed a slide that illustrates Lost's Mysteries (e.g. Ontological, formal, math, history, gegography, biographic).  Encourages people to play along at home.  See the fan sites.

He shows the map of the underground layer of the hatch from the show put together by a fan.  A fan sat there with the TIVO freeze frame and figured out the spatial relationships.  The map links to a detailed description.  This is a walk through for a game.   The biggest shows on tv are now taking it ques from the gaming world.  The fans relate to show like gamers.

He then shared the push/back skepticism that he receives from his book.  He goes on to present the talking points for the serious gamers:

If games are making us smarter, how come everyone is so stupid?

-IQ have gone up, SATs going up, other reasons underestimating
-Skills that games are teaching are ones that we don't have the tools to measure

• Systems thinking - need to use to think about ecosystems, cultural systems, rich profound form of thought.  Games teach this.
  
• Telescoping - managing of multiple objectives - prioritize, figuring them out
• Visual intelligence - other cliche with hand/eye coordination
• rule/interface intreepretation - decipher on the fly, learning by doing
• distributed collaboration - building worlds together
• patience - these games are very hard - spend 30 hours to figure out civilation 4 - sit down and learn this complex system.  Opposite of instant gratification culture.  The kid says "you are supposed to figure it out."  If each time you played chess, the basic rules were changed.  Each time you sit down - would have to figure out how it worked and then do your strategy.

What about Grand Theft Auto?

Colbert quipped, "I know my car jacking skills have gone up ..."

The walk through for that game is 53,000 words long. Longer than his book.   It's an open moral universe on some level. 

We've just lived through the most dramatic drop in crime.  This is the least violent generation since the 50's.  Not saying there is a correlation.

Playing hyper violent games does lead to aggregation.   There's another games - it's called high school football.  Does it lead to pathalogical levels of aggression?

Do we ever hear the question: Do you think they should play football versus do homework? 

What about Columbine?

Crazy people get influenced to crazy things.   What happens to sane people?  Are we only able to point to isolated incidents?

Okay maybe they're getting better at the skills, but they have no imagination.  I used to play with blocks when I was a kid.

Imaginative play is an important part of being a kid.  His response:  I remember that I used to pretend that I was flying a plane and now a kid can fly a plane in a fight simulator.  Whose ability to imagine is better?  No they haven conjured up those experiences on their own, so their imagination is being compromised.

Is traveling to other countries bad for your imagination?  You won't be able to imagine that better way of life or different culture if you actually go there.

I agree that the games are mentally challenging, but my 17 year old has been plaing WOW for the last 3 weeks?

Tells addiction story. 

Addiction is like the force in Star Wars - used for good or evil.  No question that those games have a powerful hold over our us.  How do you harness that power for good?  What are the component parts of games that make it so addicting?  If we can take that addictive structure and mix in some education ideas - that's a powerful cocktail.

Not just the flashy graphics.  Not just the control.  It's more complicated than that.

The Power of Addiction

A few points where games have a hard time reaching the achievement of other forms, like books.

Psychological depth.   Games you can control character's hunger, comfort, hypgeine, bladder levels.  You can't get to a more nuanced form of the inner life like the novel is good at doing.   There is something about the game cultural mode that makes complexity difficult.

Memory:  Refers to Lost flashbacks.  It is hard to do that with a game.  If you are forced to remember something - the internal experience of memory - that games have a hard time doing.

Fixed Causal Chains:  Showing you the possibliities.   What did happen?  To do teach it - the games stop being games.   Sometimes you need a history book to tell you what happened.

Argument and Persuasion:  Not convinced for the capacity of games for argument, better for experimentation. 

The written word is better at doing these things.   Games can't teach people how to write, but would love to be proven wrong.

The Written Word:  If you're so hot on video games, why did you write a book?

To the extent that my book emplified a discussion taking place around gaming - that conversation could only happen via a book.  It took 230 pages of linear argument.  Couldn't do it in a sound bite, game, or blog post.   The book was well suited for that type of change making - persuade people of something they didn't believe.   Culture still values books, we're reading less.

Conversation recognizes the limits as well as the power.   

Aldon Hynes is sitting in front me and also live blogging - doing a great job - he didn't have to get up at 4:00 a.m. to catch a train!

Technorati Tags: 06-g4c

LIve Blogging from the Games for Change Conference

I'm live blogging from the Games for Change Conference in NYC.  All the usual disclaimers related to typos, etc. My train from Boston was late, so I'm little late getting here.  Still doing setting the context.   Still trying to get bearings here and some coffee.  More later.   

The tag being used here: 06-g4c

The speaker is making an analogy to the early days of television (how it was bad) and asking us to insert the word "games."  ("Those of us who grew up with television are wearing reading glasses")  The article is here.

The delicious tag stream is here.

Technorati Tags: 06-g4c