Dispite the hurricane, I made it out to Stanford for the Media X Gaming to Learn conference last week. An excellent opportunity to interact with people, some new faces, some old. The interest in Non-Entertainment games appears to be growing rapidly!
Will Wright gave a great kickoff interview. A random sampling of things he said that I found interesting: "Why are we talking about "educational games" -- as if games weren't already educational!" "Stories are based on a different circuitry than games, i.e. they are based on our ability to empathize, whereas games are built on agency." "Linear media and story are the learned behavior -- games are the natural behavior." "Games will prove to be the most wide-ranging expression form - they will take all the others in." "Game designers don't have a magic formula-- most games that succeed have the time and budget to do an incredible amount of experimentation." "For me, every game is a new research project." "There are some emotions that games are better at stimulating than are movies, e.g. guilt (when you know you've done something bad) and pride (when you know you've done something good.)" "We have a big body of literature out there in books, but so far we have nothing in games."
The other part of the conference I really liked was a small-team exercise to create a game concept in a hour an pitch it to funders. Some terrific concepts emerged, including "Crush the Worm" (an anti-virus game), "Wannabee" (a virutal career game), "Dreamhouse Builder" (sponsored by Home Depot(?) "Superstar 101" (live the life of a pop star for 10 years) "Sim Thin" (anti-obesity) "Polisim" (a political game) "Teach2learn" (a students as teachers game) "The Furbs and the Bees" (a communicable disease education game), "Extreme Arts Challenge" (a team-based, art-based cell phone game) "Pursuit of Happiness" (A social studies game), "I-Witness History" (a classroom-based historical sim) and "Escape From the Ice" (a Shakelton-emulation game for leadership).
I was impressed (as I alway am) by how quickly smart and creative people can come up with good ideas. Now let's create places to do this online, so we can all share, refine and prototype the ideas and pitch them only when they are really ready! As I have written elsewhere (www.marcprensky.com/writing/default.asp), creating the educational games we want and deserve requires OPEN COLLABORATION!
Posted by Marc at September 22, 2003 02:17 AM