Opera at SXSW 2008

Panelists:
Suzanne Seggerman, Pres, Games for Change
Eric Zimmerman, Co-Founder, Gamelab
Mary Flanagan Human Code Inc
Heather Chaplin, author of Smartbomb, (Algonquin Books 2005)
Benjamin Stokes, Program Officer, MacArthur Foundation
Chris Swain, VP/Programming, Spiderdance


Suzanne Seggerman began the discussion by showing a couple of examples of games "for change." Some examples were games about congressional redistricting and Palestine. For Seggerman, "games are great for civic engagement...for engaging people of civic issues." She also thinks that games are a "sophisticated cultural form on a trajectory not unlike documentary filmmaking."

Eric Zimmerman asked the question: How do we measure impact? Well, Zimmerman argues that this actually works against the very notion of gaming and "play." For Zimmerman, the biggest challenge is not shooting too high. If the "social change" you're gunning for is something like the cure for cancer, then you're setting yourself up to fail.

Chris Swain's game of simulating congressional redistricting actually aimed at the exact thing Zimmerman warns against: it attempted to get the current ways of drawing (or redrawing districts) changed. Zimmerman was quick to point out that there's nothing wrong with this approach, but he insisted that there are strategies other than "simulating activities within the game." But he did want games to take on a "broader palette of design strategies." It seemed that Zimmerman's concern was that games for social change might end up being extremely heavy handed. Swain countered (and I don't think these two were really disagreeing) by pointing to the differences between Michael Moore movies and something like An Inconvenient Truth. For Swain, games (like movies) can effect change without being heavy-handed if they're carefully thought out. Throughout the panel, Zimmerman continually drove home the point (and the point is well taken) that those wanting to take civic action need to understand gaming before jumping into the design process.

Mary Flanagan's project Tiltfactor looks at how designers are working and how the process of making the game can feed into its meaning. Flanagan points out that many games for social change don't fully understand design principles because activists are "coming to games without coming from games." This makes complete sense to me. In the CWRL, we're attempting to design an educational game, and we've struggled with how "cool" a game can be if it's used in a writing classroom (we're still working on this.) Flanagan designed a game called "Hush" that involved a Rwandan mother attempting to keep her child quiet so that they weren't killed. This may sound lame, but someone on the panel (a gamer) had played the game and called it "the most meditative gaming experience" she'd ever had. It looks like you can download the game here.

Ben Stokes of the MacArthur Foundation talked about how MacFound is looking to fund games for social change. Stokes wants to hold games to a higher standard, but he also said that MacFound is looking for games that are commercially viable. They're also looking at mobile phone technologies, social networking, and virtual worlds along the same lines. You can read more about this type of funding here. Also, check out Henry Jenkins' project funded by the MacArthur Foundation called Project New Media Literacies. Some folks in the CWRL were able to meet with one of Jenkins' assistants last week, and the project sounds really interesting.

A book that was mentioned toward the end of the panel was Persuasive Games by Ian Bogost. This sounded like an interesting read, and (being a academic/geek) I think I might check it out.

This was a great panel. I came in skeptical that this conversation would be preachy, but having Zimmerman there (a hardcore designer who is insistent that these games actually be good) really kept everyone honest.