MacFound in Second Life

I dropped in on a public conversation between the MacArthur Foundation’s President Jonathan Fanton and Linden Labs’s CEO Philip Rosedale, hosted by the USC Center on Public Diplomacy. I think the discussion mainly focused on MacArthur’s interest in virtual worlds, including their hope that these spaces would become vibrant, parallel civic spaces (Fanton gave examples […]

Vegas: the Candyland experience

When I was in kindergarten, I hated Candyland, that syrupy, pastel board game that involved moving plastic gingermen along a linear path according to the whims of an arbitrary deck of cards. Chutes and Ladders was a similarly tedious pastime, substituting a spinner for the deck and requiring an equal amount of skill and […]

Berkman - CALI partnership

I’m excited to announce that, starting July 1, I will be bridging between the Berkman Center and CALI, managing a number of valuable initiatives of tremendous value to both organizations such as eLangdell, the Legal Education Commons, and the H2O learning platform.
Unfortunately, that also means that I will be leaving my position as Director of […]

Has the time come for eCasebooks?

Back when I was a 1L (1998), I dreamed of ditching my 10-pound, overpriced casebooks and finally switching to e-text. It would be a beautiful thing: cheaper, easier-to-use, and integrated with the way law students study. Pursuing this idea led me entirely elsewhere, but in retrospect, the technology was simply not there nine years ago […]

Games for Change wrapup retrospective

This year’s G4C conference (sorry, “festival”) continues to demonstrate a diversity of approaches, but whereas last year emphasized moving away from one-minute propaganda pieces, this year seemed to lean back in that direction, as more sophisticated simulation-based games prove difficult and expensive. There was also a lot more emphasis on game development rather than the […]

Games for Change conversation with Zimmerman and Thompson

One commenter nicely harmonized these two presentations as both calling for games to be games, but in many other respects Zimmerman and Thompson were coming at this question from opposite directions.
Zimmerman’s approach resonated with me: he identified “systems thinking” (which I recently found critical to modern legal practice) as a key affordance of games that […]

Games for Change panel : the Teen Scene

Panelists include young people from: Global Kids, Computers for Youth, McKinley Technology HS, and Bronx River Art Center, moderated by Barry Joseph, Global Kids.
This panel comprised the young people that many G4C developers want to reach: it was remarkable hearing from the youth themselves. The discussion focused heavily on using the game design process, rather […]

Games for Change panel : Market-sector Impact

Panelists Alex Chisholm ([ICE]3 Studios); Eric Brown (ImpactGames); Stephen Friedman (mtvU); moderated by Heather Chaplin (Smart Bomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment, and Big Bucks in the Videogame Revolution).
An interesting panel that, among other topics, played with the question of how games could get funded under different for-profit, not-for-profit, and non-profit models. I would have […]

Games for Change panel : Virtual Activism

Panelists: Susan Tenby (TechSoup); Evonne Heyning (Amoration); Jeska Dzwigalski (Linden Lab); moderated by Beth Kanter.
This panel focused almost exclusively on Second Life but didn’t touch what I felt to be the most important issue facing not just Games for Change but the entire realm of online activism: translating “awareness” into action. The mention of Camp […]

Games for Change keynote : Chris Melissinos (Sun)

In the next few posts I’ll be publishing audio recordings from the 4th annual Games for Change festival with some commentary from myself when I have any.
Keynote speech by Chris Melissinos, Chieg Gaming Officer at Sun Microsystems (June 11, 2007).

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