Serious Games

The use of digital games for positive social change is a growing movement that extends from Second Life to console games to innovative classroom curricula. On Monday and Tuesday next week, the Games for Change Conference will be held in New York at Parsons The New School for Design, bringing together many in the serious games community.

The Education Arcade’s multiplayer world, Revolution, is an example of a serious game.

Serious games is serious business, sparking partnerships between industry and academia. The Education Arcade (TEA) was established earlier this decade with backing from MIT researchers and Microsoft grants. Their R&D work explores the kind of learning that takes place naturally within popular commercial games. While influencing the design of games to meet the educational needs of players, TEA has contributed some games of their own, including:

• Supercharged!—explains concepts of physics by engaging players in interactive worlds instead of mathematical formulas.
• Revolution—a multi-player game set in the colonial Williamsburg of 1775, dealing with the day-to-day decisions taking place as revolts against the British Empire were beginning to take hold.
• Environmental Detectives—built with the MIT Teacher Education Program, this augmented reality game uses handheld PDAs to situate players in the real world while conducting interviews with virtual characters about the source of a toxic spill.

I first heard about the Serious Games Initiative through their connection to WebLab, my all-time favorite Internet organization. One of the brains behind WebLab’s small group dialogue, Barry Joseph, joined Global Kids in 2000 as Director of the Online Leadership Program, helping the New York City educational organization transform urban youth into successful students and community leaders. With Global Kids, Joseph develops youth-led online dialogues, video games, and explored the educational potential of virtual worlds. It is here where the path led to SGI.

The Serious Games Initiative was created in 2004 to help guide the collaborative development of video games for purposes beyond just entertainment. SGI is interested in shaping education policy and helping coordinate the ongoing game development emphasizing challenges stemming for current socio-political issues. One of the subgroups of SGI is Games for Change (G4C), which specifically examines the use of digital games for social change. G4C hosts events and acts as an evangelist body for the field. Co-founder and President Suzanne Seggerman also has WebLab connections. She was a former director at the think tank and oversaw several cross-media projects, including a curated show—”Provocations“—at the 2003 Florida Film Festival. This was the first national exhibition featuring digital games about social-issues, helping spark the serious games movement.

Although it is not my main area of focus, keeping tabs on the serious games community will likely prove inspirational. There are a number of ways to stay informed. Ian Bogost of Georgia Tech and Persuasive Games has a blog, Water Cooler Games. Social Impact Games is a central repository for information about people and projects. There is also a mailing list for G4C.

The Games for Change Conference next week will include the names above and offer some interesting sessions. Beth Kantor moderates a panel discussion on Virtual Activism between representatives of TechSoup, Second Life, and Amoration (the group behind Camp Darfur). Also, Adam Green (MoveOn.org) and Ted Castronova (Indiana University) have a conversation about Net Neutrality and where media policy and games intersect. Last September, Green had a similar discussion with Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist.org. Wish I could go. Podcasts of the 2006 conference are available online, so maybe the 2007 sessions will be covered that way, too.