The Washington Post's Mike Musgrove included a write-up about our current project in development in his column last Sunday (my apologies for late posting).
He also discusses "Imagine Cup", a student game design competition centered around the environment & sponsored by Microsoft, and the former Chief Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's & Dr. James Paul Gee's upcoming "Our Courts". Also mentioned is USC's the ReDistricting Game. All so very exciting!
(1) Thanks Tracy for previously posting about our game (RePlay: Finding Zoe) winning the Ashoka Changemakers & The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation game contest Why Games Matter: A Prescription for Improving Health and Health Care. It was selected as one of three winners this past November 8th from 74 entries representing 13 countries - winning was pretty unbelievable. The game is in version 1.2 and there may possibly be further enhancement and optimization in the near future.
(2) We presented the game at last month's International Emmys (IEMMY) in NYC - as part of a panel entitled "Telling Stories, Changing Minds". The panel participants included Jim Baker, Director of USC's IMSC, Yoko Sekita from FX Palo Alto Lab, Matt Bieber from Mobile Commons, and Dr. Subhi Quraishi from ZMQ Software Systems. The panel's speakers were given the challenge by the IEMMYs to propose ways in which an existing TV serial drama dealing with issues of domestic abuse (in a fictionalized developing country named "Borania") may be merged with other media platforms in order to enhance impact. Our project fit very well indeed, as it is an online game dealing with abusive relationships and gender stereotyping - and it was a great experience to think of how that it could merge with traditional broadcasting, as well as to work with the other panelists in order to conceive of ways in which all our efforts could somehow traverse.
(3) Also, I'll be speaking at this year's Sundance Film Festival - as part of a New Frontier On Main panel, entitled "Alternative Storytelling for New Digital Media Platforms -- How do you tell good stories in a world where your computer is a television, your cell phone is a movie screen, and your avatar addresses a global virtual audience?" I am very excited and my head swirls with the many number of things I would love to convey at this critical venue... suggestions welcome of course!
Impact Games, the company best known for their Peace Maker game about the Middle East conflict, has recently announced that it is expanding to encompass interactive Web experiences around news and current events - and they are looking to hire a Content Writer & Manager. I'm passing this notice along on behalf of Asi Burak, Co-Founder of Impact Games. Fyi, they are fantastic folks with oodles of integrity and talent.
Description:
A creative writer to lead, manage and write content for our online interactive experiences. The candidate should have a mastery of textual writing as well as the ability to attach visual and audible references to their work. We would require interested candidates to submit examples of their previous work in a range of fields, such as- fiction, non-fiction, technical writing, video games and/or journalism. We are looking for dedicated individuals with deep understanding and immersion in current events on diverse topics: Global, US, entertainment, technology, business and more. Please note that the application process will include a writing test on a selected topic/s. To Apply, send resume to: jobs(at)impactgames.com
Serious Games Source and Gamasutra interviewed Andrea Gunraj (METRAC) and I about our latest game project: RePlay: Finding Zoe.
(My apologies for the tardy blog - the interview appeared late June, as we were frentic wrapping up Version 1.0).
Version 1.2 of "RePlay: Finding Zoe" - a game we launched last month at the Games 4 Change festival is now online. The game is designed around the themes of gender stereotyping and sexism and is a collaboration with the Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and children (METRAC).
Finding Zoe was a finalist at the Changemakers Competition, which is an initiative of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public.
Feedback from this community would be invaluable and we truly hope you enjoy it!
An online game we are in the throes of producing has been nominated as one of 15 finalists (out of 243 entries from around the world) for the Changemakers competition (in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation). It is the only project that proposes a game as a powerful and viable form for social change! The project is an initiative funded by a non-for-profit organization called METRAC that works to ensure women, youth, and children live free from all forms of violence and the threat or fear of violence.
The Changemakers competition is an initiative of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public that focuses on the rapidly growing world of social innovation. It provides solutions and resources needed to help everyone become a changemaker and presents compelling stories that explore the fundamental principles of successful social innovation around the world.
The top three winners will be selected via online votes. Voting ends April 30th - vote TODAY!! Your vote would be a huge encouragement for us and would surely help us to promote the prevention of gender-based violence within the framing of an important new medium.
Here are the steps to voting - which does take a couple of minutes unfortunately, but please do take a look:
1. Go to http://www.changemakers.net/competition/endabuse
2. Click on the register link and type in your email address
3. Select the three competition entries that you wish to vote for, and submit your vote. You will need to vote for three of the finalists or your vote will be invalid.
4. VOTE FOR: RePlay Positive Video Gaming Project - The Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children (METRAC)
game screenshot #1
game screenshot #2
Ian Bogost's write-up on "Darfur is Dying" for Serious Games Source argues some key similarities and differences with The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, Ico, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, and his very own Disaffected!
some excerpts:
One of the unique properties of video games is their ability to put us in someone else’s shoes. But most of the time, those shoes are bigger than our own. When we play video games, we are like children clopping around in their parent’s loafers or pumps, imagining what it would be like to see over the kitchen counter. As I argued in my last column, this trend corresponds with video games’ tendency to fulfill power fantasies. Video games let us wield deadly weapons. They let us wage intergalactic war. They let us take a shot on goal in the World Cup final. They let us build cities, and then they let us destroy them.
Darfur is Dying, created by USC graduate Susana Ruiz as part of her MFA thesis, is a game that breaks this tradition. In one part of the game, the player takes the role of a Darfuri child who ventures out of the village to a well to retrieve water for his family.
In Darfur, weakness is all the player ever gets. There is no magic to invoke, no heroic lineage to appeal to; strength adequate to survive is simply inaccessible.
I have numerous objections to the way Darfur is Dying represents the current political situation in the Sudan, most of which relate to how the game (and really, most American media rhetoric about the region) ignores the historical and political context for the current violence. But the game’s water foraging dynamic offers an important lesson for designers of serious games. If such games are meant, at least in part, to foster empathy for terrible real-world situations in which the players fortunate enough to play video games might intervene, then those games would do well to invite us to step into the smaller, more uncomfortable shoes of the downtrodden rather than the larger, more well-heeled shoes of the powerful.
Perhaps in 1982 the world was not ready for a video game about the loneliness and frailty of an extraterrestrial. But, oddly, we were ready for a film about it. E.T.’s role in the video game crash of ’83 may or may not be overemphasized, but certainly we have used its failure as part of an ongoing excuse to represent only power, and never weakness in video games. Critics might argue that frail situations are not fun. They might argue that feeble characters do not wear shoes anyone wants to wear. And that may be true. But when it comes to the world we inhabit today, isn’t it the vulnerable— like E.T., or more strongly, like the Darfuri—who demand our empathy?
Again, complete article here
For France, Video Games Are as Artful as Cinema
PARIS, Nov. 5 — France is proud of its contribution to culture in such forms as existentialism, Impressionism and auteur films. Now the French culture minister wants to add Donkey Kong to his country’s pantheon of high art.
“Call me the minister of video games if you want — I am proud of this,” the minister, Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, said in an interview last month. “People have looked down on video games for far too long, overlooking their great creativity and cultural value.”
Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres is seeking to have video games recognized as a cultural industry eligible for tax breaks, similar to French cinema.
In March, he pinned medals from the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres — a prize awarded to acknowledge cultural accomplishments — on three prominent video game designers, including Shigeru Miyamoto, the Japanese creator of Donkey Kong. The game, popularized in the 1980s, stars an Italian plumber called Mario.
Video game creators should receive a tax break of 20 percent, up to a ceiling of 500,000 euros, Mr. Donnedieu de Vabres says.
“Video games are not a mere commercial product,” he insisted. “They are a form of artistic expression involving creation from script writers, designers and directors.”
... However:
The Interactive Software Federation of Europe, a group of international video game companies, however, is opposed to enshrining video games as a part of cultural heritage for fear of government interference, and has resisted the tax breaks.
“The French concept of culture is that the government knows better than consumers,” said Patrice Chazerand, secretary general of the group, based in Brussels. “It is unhealthy to have the French government using discriminatory subsidies to influence video games.”
running to get one right now. ha ha ha!
Two blog interviews about "Darfur is Dying" are listed below - they afforded me with a great opportunity to be thorough and coherent and I am grateful to both writers/bloggers/journalists for their interest. Reading both may be a bit redundant, but each one has unique details. Should you like it, hey - you can Digg it (1UP only). That would be terrific!