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News from the Future of Public Media
Live from the Gaming Panel: Documentary Gaming and more
email discuss Posted by Jessica Clark on Feb 7, 2008 at 8:41 PM
Suzanne Seggerman from Games for Change introduced the panel, starting her presentation by addressing fear, talking about how each new media generates resistance in its era. (Voltaire on books: “the multitude of books is making us ignorant.”) She noted that it’s not just “boys in basements” playing games—the average gamer is 33. The MacArthur Foundation is funding research on games, and has found that they are great tools for exploring new worlds and new perspectives, teaching complex problem solving with multiple variables, and testing out new behaviors. Games can “really help systemic thinking,” notes Seggarman. “Situated learning” is another behavior related to games, deeper and more engaged than simply consuming media.
Games for Change wants to know how to harness this new medium for public good. Their core assumptions are that games are good for civic engagement, not unlike documentary film, and great for social change. People are calling Games for Change a “Sundance of gaming.” They have regional chapters, a lab at The New School, and have helped to shape the public discourse about gaming. They work with non-profits and foundations new to the field to fund and develop games for the public interest. “Interactive media will be the dominant form of media in the 21st century,” she said. “I’ll let you chew on that for awhile; some of you may want to spit it out.”
Dennis Palmieri of ITVS spoke about World Without Oil, part of their Independent Lens Web-only content. World Without Oil is an alternative reality game which we blogged about a few months ago. 1,800 players from 12 countries registered with the game, and there were 60,000 spectators, and the players contributed all of the content. The game designers—called “puppetmasters”—created a shell for interaction. While it was hosted at the World Without Oil site, the content lived all over the Internet, at YouTube or other content hosting services. “So, people who aren’t even looking for the game came across it and got sucked into it,” explained Palmieri. One contributor created cartoons; other uploaded satirical images. Some users took the experience offline, making concrete changes to their offline lives, converting their cars to biodiesel, biking to work, composting, etc. “If you talk about games for social change, I can’t imagine a better example of it,” Palmieri said. He showed a video of the participatory contributions to the game, along with reviews. “The best way to change the future is to play with it first,” wrote one CNET reviewer.
“The name of the game is participation,” said Palmieri, “and the rules of the game have changed…people aren’t content anymore to sit back and watch a piece of media…they want to have a role.” ITVS is embracing this concept, creating online spaces for users to feature their own content. For example, they’re creating a site called Filmocracy which will allow users to do mashups using footage from a documentary called King Corn
Heidi Boisvert, lead designer of ICED! (I Can End Deportation), explained that she used to be a filmmaker but always wanted to figure out how to involve her subjects, and games allow for a much more participatory process. ICED! is a 3D, downloadable interactive role-playing game aimed at high school and college-aged students. The designers are trying to spark a dialogue around immigration among this audience. Boisvert explained that a 1996 law expanded the types of crimes that immigrants could be detained and deported for; in the game, these moments serve as triggers for action. As a result of the 1996 law, immigrants have been detained, families have been separated, and 1.2 billion tax dollars have gone into detaining an average of 20,000 detainees/day.
ICED! characters are immigrant youth who represent different statuses—green card holder, undocumented, asylum seeker, etc. There are two environments—a city and a detention center. The object of the game is to stay out of trouble, which is “unlikely but not impossible.” While the players can positively participate in the community, they still run the risk of being placed in detention. The detention center environment includes real-life details, such as expensive phone calls, unjust conditions, etc. The outcome is “randomly programmed to reflect the inconsistencies of the legal terrain.”
The game developers worked with over 100 NYC youth to develop the game. They found that players were most interested in being able to make choices within the game, and to develop skills. The young participants helped to develop character profiles and discussed potential game obstacles, and worked to make language more accessible. The kids also helped to work on some of the sound recordings for the game. Game designers also consulted immigration advocates to confirm details.
Backstories for the characters were gleaned from compilations of different immigrants’ stories. One character, named Ayesha, complains that officers called her “al Queda.” Players must answer myth/fact questions about immigration as part of the challenge. The designers incorporated pressure to sign voluntary deportation letters “gamically” by providing this as an “out” for players who want to stop the game. Once the character is deported, the game provides a story about what happens as he/she readapts.
ICED! is being hosted by the iBreakthrough social network, at http://www.icedgame.com
Eric Brown of ImpactGames talked about their various projects. One, PeaceMaker, is about the Israeli-Palestine conflict, which has been sold in over 60 countries. He noted that working with a nonprofit, the Peres Center for Peace, has been a good partnership because the gamers don’t have experience in community outreach. He called their method “documentary gaming,” noting that some of the same challenges about objectivity and audience apply, but that creating true-to-live games presents different issues. People expect “ogres, trolls,” he said. To make a connection, the designers use real footage to “make it visceral.”
Brown discussed the user feedback, which confirms that people felt as though they had learned a lot more about the conflict than they might from watching the news. ImpactGames has now been asked to make games about new conflicts.
A new platform they’re developing, Play the News, allows players to “choose a role, take an action, predict the future.” The game site looks like a newspaper site, with interactive map elements to help contextualize stories, offering capsule summaries of conflicts and events, video clips, etc. Players can voice their opinions on the conflict, predict what will happen, and have opinions ranked within the game, creating a reputation over time. The long-term goal is to get people engaged in creating content. Interested beta-testers can sign up at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Ivan Marovic demonstrated A Force More Powerful, a single-player strategy game. The player is the leader of a nonviolent movement; the goal is to win the conflict with nonviolent methods. The game helps the player to develop analytical skills amongst “mimetic chaos.” It also helps to teach decision-making. Marovic’s personal story is that he was a student in Serbia and was involved in the student resistance movement that brought down Milosevic. He helped to co-found an organization to train people in using nonviolent methods. They only had a handful of trainers, and “supply never met demand.” Steve York, a filmmaker, was at the same time watching a number of films about such conflicts, but found them to be a limited teaching tool. Marovic worked with his company, York Zimmerman, to develop the game.
“It was very important for us to include a scenario-editor, so people could make their own scenarios,” said Marovic. People can import maps, images of politicians from their own country, etc—and then post it on the web, play it with their friends, and discuss possible outcomes. By making the scenario, “you can actually understand your country and situation much better,” he said. He talked about the games serving as a kind of ambassador in countries like Burma. “You can’t intimidate a CD,” he noted, while getting advocates into the country would be much harder.
The panelists talked about ways of measuring the impact of the games, assessing learning before and after, attaching the game to collateral outreach materials, etc. One very successful U.S. Army game has served as a recruiting tool—Seggerman suggested that nonprofits could learn from this success. One audience member had made a controversial game about Columbine, and is now making a movie about the uproar that ensued.
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