So I volunteered for both days of the Games for Change Festival and the summit beforehand, and it ended up being a pretty awesome experience. From the games arcade where you could play all of the Games for Change award nominees, to the keynotes by James Gee, Jane McGonigal, Nolan Bushnell, and Lucy Bradshaw; to the hallway conversations with the other attendees, it was highly inspiring. I came away with a lot of ideas for games to play, games to make, people to interview for Will Play Games for Change, etc.
I plan on sharing a lot of excerpts from talks people gave in the coming weeks and months because there were definitely insights, anecdotes and theories that it would be great to collect in written form, both for myself and for others.
For now here are some of the topics that I recall coming up again and again in different talks throughout the festival:
Jane McGonigal speaking about her game SuperBetter at the 2012 Games for Change festival.
Democritization– There was plenty of evidence at the festival that more and more people who play games and games for change are not content to simply be consumers of these systems but want to create them as well. I heard from some winners of the National STEM Video Game Challenge talking about games they’d made before they even entered high school. Ian Bogost live demoed his project Game-o-matic, currently in beta, which is intended to make it easier for non-coders and journalists to make simple newsgames. Microsoft gave a workshop on Kodu, a visual programming language for making games that’s supposed to be kid-friendly. Nick Fortugno showed attendees how quickly they could make a paper prototype of a game and assured them that their first efforts would suck… hard.
Mixed business models – It’s sweet to get a big grant from a foundation, but it might not be the most sustainable way to make your game for change. A lot of attendees, both at the podium and away from it, were talking about mixed business models where there was a business component that sustained the game’s social mission.
For example, Zamzee is a Fitbit or Nike+ like device to get middle schoolers to be more physically active. It was developed by a nonprofit but launched as a for-profit social enterprise in an attempt to reach a larger audience. I hope to cover this trend more in the future since I think unclear funding routes are a major challenge facing new games for change developers.
Agency for players – This may seem intuitive to experienced game designers, but plenty of games for change don’t give players enough agency. Scott Rigby, a research psychologist from Immersyve, which studies and consults on engagement and gamification, said in his talk that deep engagement comes from fulfillment of basic psychological needs. He said that some of these core needs were competence, relatedness, and autonomy; shockingly, he also said that fulfillment of these needs was a better predictor of long-term engagement than fun! However, agency can take even simple forms such as the self-expression of customizing your avatar or environment.
Of course there were other key themes I am likely overlooking, and if you attended the festival, please feel free to add them in the comments.