G4C: Inventing the Future

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” - Alan Key

Expert practitioners, academics, activists, representatives from non-profits and game designers were gathered this week at the annual Games for Change festival in New York. Under discussion and debate was the games as a meaningful agent for social change, the impact of current games for social change and the future and transformative power of games and learning.

A lot of discussion evolved around mobile games and learning. As University of Madison assistant professor and researcher Kurt Squire pointed out, "With mobile devices, we can take kids out of the walls we’ve put up around them, that currently keep them from participating." Squired explained similarities between the process of playing and designing games to the process of designing and a community. In both activities stake holders must: identify resources, invent and change rule systems, achieve competencies and level up, plan strategies and ultimately organize their community. "This makes games a mechanism to participate in the world—as you become competent you want to do something about what you see happening around you."

Matthew Kam and Subhi Quraishi of ZMQ, also joined the conversation, presenting their work and research using mobile games to make education more accessible to children. Specifically in India, where child labor frequently prevents kids from going to school. As they pointed out in their presentation, mobile devices allow children to learn outside of the formal school setting. They also underlined the importance of a human-centered design process that focuses on the local culture and its needs.

The term "Transmedia" was brought up frequently during the panels, as a strategy for engaging people in a narrative that expands across media and allows for multiple entry points into a storyline, as well as learning and civic participation opportunities. In the keynote conversation between Games for Change Board chairman Alan Gershenfeld and Neal Baer, the Executive Producer of both the “Law & Order: SVU” and “ER” television programs, Baer furthered informed the discussion of transmedia by sharing a recent project. In this example, he expanded a “Law & Order: SVU” storyline related to rape in the Congo, by partnering with a range of organizations and influencers— Take Part, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, The Huffington Post and Human Rights Watch. This coalition translated into over a million tweets about the issue and the episode, as well as landing coverage on partner sites that outlined concrete actions that people could take to get involved with the issue.

NYU Computer Science professor, Ken Perlin, connected the recurring theme of transmedia and narratives, pointing out that if you create a compelling character of any sort, transmedia will form around it, be it Kermit the Frog or Sarah Palin. Nick Bilton from the NYtimes demonstrated how data can be used to tell stories and news can be spread, showing a video visualizing mobile and web visits to the site on a world map over the course of the day Michael Jackson died.

<"www.q2l.org" target="new">Quest to Learn student's also participated in the three-day long G4C festival. Several students presented at the day-long Youth Game Design Workshop and talked about how learning game design has taught them persistence, how to understand systems and new ways of learning!