Valuable Games » Opinion & Advocacy

Games for Change Boston – workshop wrapup

Gene Koo — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:55:54 +0000

At this year’s Independent Game Conference – East, the Boston chapter of Games for Change ran a prototyping workshop with some 30 conference participants. The goal: brainstorm game concepts addressing one of the three issues targeted by our three participating nonprofits: Teach for America, Mercy Corps, and the Boston Foundation’s youth violence initiative. Participants generated a wide range of concepts ranging from learning puzzles to augmented reality and game design challenges. Just as interesting, goals ranged from educating players to fostering community to shaping real-world behaviors.

For our next act, Boston Games for Change will host a gamejam to move one or more of these basic concepts into a working prototype. In the meantime, we’ll be representing at the 6th Annual Games for Change Festival in New York, May 27-29. Register now!

The virtual and the real Washington, DC

Gene Koo — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 00:01:39 +0000

Having so recently finished Fallout 3 (review coming soon!), I found myself contrasting images from today’s concert at the Lincoln Memorial with that same location in the virtual, post-apocalyptic Washington DC portrayed in Fallout. The game had generated some minor controversy when its marketers plastered the real Metro Center subway station with ads that included an image of a bombed-out Capitol Building. (Metro Center appears in the game as well).

Update: Here are contrasting images related to yesterday’s Inauguration:

The Fallout series satirizes the Cold War and in particular the aesthetics and politics of the 1950s, as seen through the lens of the Regan era (it was inspired by the 1988 title, Wasteland). And it’s cynical in a late Cold War, 99 Luftbalons kind of way, depicting both government and society as dysfunctional, greedy, and selfishly tribal. This was politics à la mode, but the hundreds of thousands gathered today around the Reflecting Pool attest to a new zeitgeist, one that makes the old cynicism seem out of place.

Games: The “Vast Wasteland”?

editorial staff — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:33:54 +0000

As I’m hacking out the outlines of a forthcoming chapter on games and morality, I’m looking at the full context of Newt Minow’s infamous “vast wasteland” speech about television. Given in 1961 while Minow was chairman of the FCC, the speech is, in fact, fairly optimistic about television’s potential as a medium. In it, Minow quotes Gov. LeRoy Collins, newly president of the National Association of Broadcasters:

Broadcasting to serve the public interest, must have a soul and a conscience, a burning desire to excel, as well as to sell; the urge to build the character, citizenship, and intellectual stature of people, as well as to expand the gross national product. …By no means do I imply that broadcasters disregard the public interest. …But a much better job can be done, and should be done.

It’s a remarkable speech in that its overall thesis — and even specific ideas — can largely be lifted out of television and into the world of video games:

You must provide a wider range of choices, more diversity, more alternatives. It is not enough to cater to the nation’s whims; you must also serve the nation’s needs. And I would add this: that if some of you persist in a relentless search for the highest rating and the lowest common denominator, you may very well lose your audience. Because, to paraphrase a great American who was recently my law partner, the people are wise, wiser than some of the broadcasters — and politicians — think.

another Parents’ Guide to Video Games

editorial staff — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:00:57 +0000

Related to our recent discussion on positive game ratings and the need for better game reviews, here’s a new effort to publish a parents’ guide to video games: GameProFamily (reposted at Wired). The reviews spotlight the experience over content, and you’ll see in this overview of the Mario empire there’s some attempt to emphasize the “benefits” of games, e.g. dexterity (that old work horse) and learning to care for “fragile cargo.”

- Gene Koo

What might a pro-social rating system look like?

editorial staff — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:42:15 +0000

This was the mostly-serious question I put to our games group last night at our monthly meeting. The question emerged from previous discussions we’d had about how the meta-game-industry – critics, player feedback – influences game development. While the ESRB ratings are about as fuzzy as MPAA film ratings – and equally subject to manipulation – there’s no doubt that they influence actual design decisions. One former developer talked about how his team worked to keep a shooter at a “Teen” rating, which meant, for example, that players should not be able to manipulate dead bodies. (Shooting them while alive, of course, is perfectly fine!).

We struck on a range of possibilities: an ESRB-like rating system, better search categories in game databases, better game criticism, and of course self-critical game design. Although it opens the door to even more subjectivity, we were all interested in shifting the focus from a checklist of features (blood? gore? bad language?) to an evaluation of the gameplay experience. Whether the graphics feature blood or not, does the game encourage cooperation and mutual sacrifice?

Some general ideas that emerged:

“Book club” style questions, either scaffolded around or built into the gameplay
“Director’s commentary,” like Half-Life 2 and Portal, but with stronger focus on the game’s artistic and moral vision and how that influenced design decisions
Interpretative walkthroughs, like the 500-page one for Silent Hill 2
Some frameworks that might prove rich mining for frameworks:

the “habits of mind”
the “seven intelligences”
the Partnership for 21st Century Skills
from “five minds for the future,” the “respectful mind” and the “cooperative mind”

Specific terms that did leap to mind, though not necessarily for use in an ESRB fashion: depth of choice, existential intelligence, sharing, trust, reflection, awareness, problem-solving, citizenship, collaboration, professional ethics, empathy, responsibility, interpersonal skills, intrapersonal skills

Note that, given our focus on moral and ethical values, the last list does not include other positive experiences that a game might offer – for example, mathematical problem-solving. And we tried to steer clear from whether the game would produce any particular effects, instead focusing more on the game experience.

I’d welcome any additional ideas to add to the above brainstorm list!

- Gene Koo

Persepolis for Xbox 360? (cross-post from GAMBIT blog)

editorial staff — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 21:28:30 +0000

…In light of something as moving and personal as Persepolis, the idea of playing a game that dealt with repression and revolution like Just Cause did made me recoil. My initial revulsion at the game’s shallowness came surging back even more intense than before. Disgusted, I asked myself why it seemed impossible to make a game that dealt with social upheaval the way Persepolis did…

Violence and Games (cross-post from GAMBIT blog)

editorial staff — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:07:40 +0000

But one of the stinging rules of rhetorical debate is that “silence is consent”. DesIn short, the gaming community conceded the argument that violent video games have been proven harmful to minors…

But there was a second loss in our silence. We accepted the framing that there is something dangerous here, and the only debate to be had is whether the industry is doing enough or if the government should do more. There was no discussion of social, cultural , or educational concerns with limiting access to games. By conceding that that studies have spoken, we ignored a discussion about why the results of all these conflicting studies might be more complicated than either side makes them out to be, and what role education, cultural and family discussion and media literacy play in how children participate in the world around them.