G4C Rapid Fire Talks

Ushahidi – Crisis Mapping
Interested in using games to improve crisis mapping
So far the mapping has been massive manual information. Trains tons of people to use the platform, received info from texts from haitians and then crowdsourced translations.
Interested in how services can be microtasked, turned into Human Intelligence Tasks manageable through Mechanical Turk or WoW.
Wants to develop altruism scores, re-vision labs and going from crowdsourcing to playsourcing.

Richard Lemarchand lead designer for Uncharted 2
Charles Dickens knew first hand how crappy 19th Century London was. He wove comedy and tragedy, chifhangers, but he didn’t sermonize or offer solutions. As Orwell said, “He managed to attack everybvody and antagonize nobody”

Max and the Magic Marker

Good game story telling is very challenging-all the challenges of normal narrative plus the unique structure of games

Challenge is to align the peaks and troughs of gameplay experience with narrative peaks and troughs

Dickens of games is probobly not a single person but a collaboration

Jessica Hammer – game designer/reseracher
People tend to lie about who they are. Really, people lie about everything, like all the time. “Social desirability bias” We want to look appealing to others.

As a designer, you must take SDB into acount. With games for change we want games to be processing deeply. With SDB, though, people are often doing what they think they should be doing, behaving how they think they should be behaving, and so they will be less likely to really think about what your trying to communicate. If your game is about telling people what they should be doing, it will not be received.

Give people legit choices, make them balance one social good against another, give them challenges about how much, when, etc.

Ntiedo Etuk – Dimension U – a portal to educational games
“Student -Centric Learning”
Trying to make learning a lifestyle
Games are good for learning. Kids are not
African Americans and Latinos actually play games more than white kids

Games designed so kids need academic skills in game, but can access resources in real time to help their problem solving.

Brian Reich – Managing Director some media company
Why is what we’re doing not working? –good question
Expectations for what people have for games is determined by everything out there–shoe commercials, music etc.
We don’t understand our audience well enough
We need to understand why people play other games? Why do they like them?
We need to work with people of various skills.
We need to stop typing what we’re hearing because it seems inconsequential.
Too many words on powerpoint slides.

Jane Pickard–Foundation 9
Designing for the total limbic games
We used to ask what does the player do, now we ask what does the player feel while doing it?
Games are good at stimulating reptilian and neo cortex, but less good at stimulating limbic system (love, emotion)
In most games, if there’s love, it’s like discovering a love story written for you
Dragon Age is complex enough that it feels legit
Designing for love/What to do on a first date:
Make player smile
Adreniline-filled moments
Let the player express herself
Allow for vulnerability

Love is a battlefield and there’s a lot of room for conflict

Rob Dubbin – writer the Colbert Report

robdubbin@talkingpet.org

Aphorism = a constraint on reality
Game design is a constraint on reality

Any aphorism can suggest a game design.

Elegance can yield complexity if you poke it enough

Games 4 Change Korea

Running out of battery! Emergency Incomplete Post!

Gather ’round the vaccuum tubes children

I’ll be on the radio tonight with my good friend Bronwyn. We’re guest DJing “Seven Second Delay” from 6-7pm on WFMU 91.1. To my knowledge, we won’t be discussing anything game related, but we have an hour to fill and no firm idea of how we’re going to fill it, so anything is possible. You can listen over the air, or if you can’t, you can hear the live stream at http://wfmu.org/.

Hopefully it will be funny.

Update: Here’s the link to the archived show.

Here’s something to kill time

I’ve been banging my head against Jane McGonigal’s TED talk for the past week and a half trying to think of something intelligent to write, but I’ve just been stuck with a vaguely unsatisfied feeling and no coherent analysis. As someone interested in game-based learning and the transformative power of games, it seems wrong to just write, “Aw, that’ll never work.”

Amuse yourself with this while I keep thinking.

Jumping!

Beautifully bizarre.

level end/only one life

via: Pictures for Sad Children

That wasn’t the punchline. It’s actually much darker.

See the rest.

Arcade Expressionism

3 beautiful paintings by Brock Davis.

via: today and tomorrow

Violin Hero

I think this speaks for itself.