 Good afternoon or good early evening. My name my name is David Thorburn I'm a professor of literature and the director of the MIT communications forum It's my pleasure as forum director to thank the Knight Foundation comparative media studies and the Media Lab for this very exciting Collaboration that we've just begun the forum is very happy to play a small role in this collaboration We feel that this series on civic media is Going to do very interesting things not only within our own community, which is important I think it's going to be a very important discourse for MIT folks But especially out beyond MIT and and the forum is proud of its of its role as a collaborator in Sponsoring the most public of the events connected to the night Knight Foundation grant Today's forum is the second in what we hope will be a very rich distinctive series that will run over the next several semesters Before I before I introduce today's moderator and that will complete my obligations for today I have two other tasks. I'd like to Take care of one is to remind you about next week You can see the event that's listed on our on our website for next week This is a particularly interesting time for a discussion about television as some of you may know because of the strike that has just occurred And my hope is that we will be able to get these writer producers who are really caught in a very interesting Pickle right now to talk a bit about the Circumstances of the writer in Hollywood and the effects on on on the television industry Especially of the writer strike what some of the issues are behind it And I think it's also important to remind folks who who might have some skepticism From certain angles about material of this sort that that apart from the astonishing success of heroes as a popular text and It is also a pioneering show as we tried to indicate in our subtitle because of the way in which it's exploiting the new technologies Nielsen now tracks the number of hits that Websites connected to television programs get and the website for heroes gets far more hits Millions more hits than the next closest fiction program with a website The people who are running heroes know something about the way about this about how to create synergies with new media That will be certainly part of the discourse will engage you next week And I hope many of you will return for that event as an added inducement I can mention that my friend and Sort volcanic source of ideas Henry Jenkins Sighted by some people as the newest as the as the new Marshall McLuhan is going to be the moderator next week And that alone is probably worth the price of admission The second thing I want to do is remind some of you mention for some of you who are who are newcomers to the forum What our basic format is the roughly the first hour Although my hope is that the panelists because they don't have elaborate prepared talks will compress it even further Since we're starting 10 or 11 minutes late The roughly the first hour is devoted to conversation and discourse among the panelists and the second hour almost always the highlight of our sessions is Question and answer with the session with the audience My hope is that you will be passionate engaged even critical and angry so long as you also remain civil And it's been I think one of the real signature marks of the communications forum something We've always tried to encourage in our events is the is that Are these moments of passionate interaction that we can still regard as civic and respectful That's my ambition for the forum in general and it's especially my ambition for our discussion today I hope especially that there are some skeptics in the audience who will question Some of the assumptions that that that are being made by by folks on the panel and who will ask hard questions about the application of games to so many aspects of experience Eric Klopp for my colleague from MIT is the director of the teacher education program and Co-director of the education arcade at MIT He is also an associate professor in the Department of Urban Studies and planning The teacher education program at MIT prepares undergraduates prepares MIT undergraduates to become math and science teachers Eric's research focuses on the development and use of computer games and simulations for building an understanding of science and complex systems Eric will be the moderator and and Empressorio for everything that follows Eric and so First of all, I'd like to extend the thanks to the communications forum and of course the Center for Future Civic Media and their support from the night foundation A large contingent of which are here visiting us today. So I'd like to thank them for their support I'd also I'd just like to give a call out to a group a contingent from Pepperdine who's visiting us today And as president the forum and I feel like I'm a bit of a talk show host. Is there anybody from New York here? Excellent. Yeah anybody from California and I'm gonna I'm gonna we decided that we talked about a week or so ago about what the format we should use for today's Discussion should be and we thought we'd buck the trend a little bit of of of any kind of formalized talks and prepared today Mostly as a as a conversation And then we discussed some topics of conversation That we would that we would have I'm a little concerned because these guys are both pretty shy So there's gonna be probably some long awkward pauses where they decide they don't want to say anything But I'll try to kind of fill in the interstitial spaces there But I did say I would give them at least a few minutes to introduce themselves and talk about some of their interests and some of their Background and some of how they got to the place that they are and so that will be the that will be the extent of our formal presentation Then we'll kind of do a little bit of Q&A and we'll do that roughly for the first hour I have some conversations that I prepared and to talk about with these nice gentlemen And then we will open it up to the to the audience in general to to have further questions So that's the format. I will let Mario introduce himself and talk a little bit about how he got here Okay, great. I want to say thank you first and foremost Thanks for all of you for inviting me and having me here It's really a pleasure and an honor to be here and I'm humbled to share some of my experiences with you this evening As you can start up on the screen here I'm just gonna walk you through a little brief background of who I am because I do think that in some senses I have a different context or a different perception of some of what's happening as it relates to video games and education So I'll walk you through and then hopefully you'll get a little bit of the story of the life and how I ended up here So number one I started out as a little kid with an interest in taking apart computer games My first one I took apart was the Atari 2600 It was a nice thing to do But my drove my parents crazy who were on limited funds and would see their their their hard-earned money Spread out on the living room floor the day after it was purchased So you can only imagine the cringing that they were doing as parents, but they supported my curiosity, which was very important From that I somehow ended up with a name Mario Which I found out had no relation to Super Mario was more that my father seemed to be into Godfather movies or something And that's where the Mario came from but nonetheless Super Mario Brothers haunted me during high school as everyone would tease me and ask Me where is Luigi? So that was a pretty big problem I then grew up and found myself in the corporate world and as you can see I used to push a lot of paper in sales arena around Technology I decided let me get a checklist going this doesn't seem like the right path Decided to do technology and computers and held several positions from network administration to web development to user support of various Different positions throughout technology and it's been this kind of ride on this technology learning curve ever since From there. I ended up in a unique position after working in the private industry The mayor of Baltimore City said hey, we're doing this thing We hear we're doing this thing called the digital harbor. This is out of Baltimore mayor Martin O'Malley and The red tape obviously You understand what that means so I found myself leaving private industry to go ahead into Red tape and the whole idea was to create a position that wasn't there before that was about bringing technology Solutions to the city in other words How could we create economic development programs? socio-economic Development programs that could not only enable our citizens to be more digitally savvy and be able to apply for jobs But also how could we bridge relationships between some of our higher learning? institutions like Johns Hopkins and spin out some of their research into the market and how could we find connectivity points to Create that vibe in Baltimore City and hone that vibe in Baltimore City. So after being there for Several years he decided to go on and become the governor. I said I'll do my own thing now It was fun, but he one of the things that we did announce That was one of several projects that we did that I still to this day reflect upon is when we took the city wireless And if you go back a few years, you know 2001 this was a big deal to talk about a city thinking about moving its Citizens wireless and what does that mean and how can that impact education? How did that enable tourism? How did that enable a business development? So that was a very big deal for us in one of the proud Portions of that tenure all along. I enjoyed talking. I just loved to talk So while I had all these jobs in the technology field I ended up always seeming to find my way into being either the corporate spokesperson about technology the person that was seen as Someone that could communicate in layman's terms and break down Some of the things that were happening in these complex worlds that we live in So I decided at some point to try my own radio show and there's a whole other story behind that but I'll save that for another day, but In 1999 I had about maybe 20 or so households. It was a very low wattage station Bought my own airtime and I joked that nobody listened because it was just such a small small arena So you flash fast forward a little bit to 2007 and I'm actually interviewing people like Sid Meyer. So if anyone knows who Sid Meyer is right, but one of the best creators of this time I guess you could say if you play the game civilization and other games of that That's who Sid Meyer is so nonetheless, you know, we go from what 20 households to 17 million or so households with a combination of different programs like morning edition like news and those with Farai today I like my XM daily talk show and then some of the Television programs that I do for Comcast and other outlets. So it's been a great ride communicating technology That's kind of been my thing and then as it relates to gaming I've always had an interest in gaming obviously dating back to when I was a kid I co-founded a program called the Urban Video Game Academy. It's myself Joseph Salter as well as Roderick Woodruff So the three of us got together and said hey, there is a problem in the industry There aren't enough women creating games designing games and there certainly are not enough minorities Developing games in the industry. What is the problem? Well, it's exposure. It's education. It's role models It's the fact that they don't know that these are even career tracks. The parents don't know that there are degree programs So how do we put that into a model make it free to inner-city students that want to come and make an after-school or summer school? Program so we ran this pilot for about three years a lot of press USA Today CNN and others as well as NPR picked up the story and supported what we were trying to do with the initiative and It's really this is really something that's it. It's not I want to pause just on this one part I am trying to be fast for the sake of time, but I do want to pause and take a breath for a second on this one part because I think while we talk today about how games can impact education and where that impact is Working where it may not be working. What are the challenges? one of the things that We are working on or I'm working on now is really tying the development cycle of video games The cycle of creating a game of creating a character of creating a narrative story to core academics So instead of just teaching kids how to develop games We're more teaching them. We're hooking them by something they love to do and that is to learn and play games But what we're trying to do is tie that into middle school curriculum So that when we are on a screen that has an x and y axis or we're on a screen where a wire frame is there before It's a character we can reinforce geometry and mathematics and physics. Oh, you want to write the objectives and the narrative story Oh, well, that's creative storytelling. Do you know your sentence structures? Do you so we're trying to tie in the development process through core academics and that's where our challenge is right now And so we're in the process of putting those pieces together and in 2008 We have spot-off the partners are all doing their own things now and so we're I'm taking those lessons learned and creating a launch of a new academy in 2008 and Invite all of those that are interested to understand more about this. It's really an exciting process that we're going through So that pretty much gives you a background of me outside of radio TV and online media I do we do have a company I actually run a company called Mario Armstrong media and we consult and we've consulted everyone from Charter schools in Baltimore City all the way over to corporate clients like AOL and a variety of different initiatives as well as doing Public speaking and events around STEM science technology engineering and math We do events to really try to spark the interest in our youth to want to go down the innovative path in a unique and different way So I hope that gives you a quick synopsis of Who I am and what I do and if it could I take one other quick minute? Did I do pretty good? I do fast all right because I just I just want to you know when when you're have an opportunity to speak at MIT Right, this is like the intellectual capital of the world as far as as far as I'm concerned It's the intellectual capital the world So as I travel around and do a lot of public speaking to different audiences and age groups and and so on and so forth You know like our company has sat around the table and we started thinking about products that we thought would be neat to bring to market Ourself, so I just want to take this as a market research opportunity real fast like 30 seconds to just get your read on whether I'm on to something or if I'm way out in left field here so we see a lot of kids using the internet and and many of you would say oh well They're playing video games at home and you know There's the outdoor exposure is becoming less and less so we started thinking about well How do we bring sun and excitement back to these kids? so we came up with an idea called the USB PC tanning center and And and you know maybe by the time we launch it it'll be the firewire PC tanning center But right now it's the USB one and this is a snapshot of what it looks like so So as you can see it has two base units here that feature some ultraviolet rays here and and we even include we include these Little eyeglass things with the package they think the eyeball cover thingies they come with this package We haven't quite figured out the okay. I'm just joking Take it from the last that maybe it's not that bad of an idea as a prank prank item, baby All right. Well, thanks so much for your time. I appreciate being here and look forward to our discussion As it relates to this topic. Thanks again Over to you Ian. Okay, maybe I can get up on the screen here. Oh, yeah, those are the small the smaller versions of me My name's Ian bogus I teach at Georgia Tech and I run a studio a game studio called persuasive games I'm a I'm a video game critic and designer, which is a good job to have I wanted to tell you just in a few minutes about what I do and I thought I would do that first By showing you an example of some of the things that trouble me So this is one of the topics that we might be thinking about lately oil we could pick anything else but when I think about the world and the complexity of it it strikes me that That that's a subject. We don't treat And as much detail as we could so think about oil for a minute and just imagine The ways that we might engage it In our thinking and our daily practice. I mean, you know, certainly there's Topics like geochemistry and seismology and we might want to know where we could go drilling and you know What kind of places in the world those mean but maybe in order to do that We should understand something about the the history of conflict in those regions, especially like in the Middle East and Africa where Where there's a considerable amounts of oil those happen to be you know largely parts of the developing world Or maybe we think about the the futures markets on which Petroleum trades and the relationship between that and global capitalism or between global capitalism and let's say ecology Which also seems to have something to do with oil You know logistics and commerce and and things like the way that we live also seem to be related In fact, the only reason that we need to drive so much is because of the kind of ways that we dwell especially in in this country And that brings up questions in my mind like issues of labor Why why do we work in the way that we do and how our city is planned around that and how might we be in fact healthier if we If we walked or if we built community gardens that didn't rely on transporting our food over many thousands of miles with petroleum Fueled fleets and and so forth and you know, I live in Atlanta where where transit is less of an option But in fact is deeply related to issues of race and the development of our metropolitan system in the 1960s and 70s It was deeply tied to to race relations or the lack of them And you know, so these are political issues really and and I think that you know when we start to kind of think about any kind of topic in the world This is what it ends up looking like is this complex web of interconnected issues But but yet if I look at the ways that we have chosen to translate Media and our engagement with the world through media It doesn't strike me that we're taking advantage of that challenge. So, you know, when we use mobile devices to send hundred sixty character messages or or when we write 20 word posts on our blogs or or or a little insignificant Whatever is on Twitter or two minute videos that we put on YouTube Is that the best way of getting at the the complexity that I see in the world Whereas video games with which are a topic of study that that I think are related to these other media video games of all kinds in fact Seem to be very good at addressing complexity and complexity of many issues and they do this in my mind By building models rather than taking the ways that we communicate The way that we saw we've always communicated with words or with letters or with images and simply putting those On computers so that we can translate them transmit them on the internet Video games allow us to build models These are a new kind of representation of these things and those models make claims about how things work Or how they might work differently and they allow us to have experiences that are constrained by them Computational representation when we build models with computer code are tremendously flexible and they make it possible for us to model almost anything Theoretically, this is a question. I've tried to address in my research This is a recent book on that topic, but it's also something I've tried to address in my game design work The kinds of experiences that we can have constrained by the models that that we might build around them And I think this goes for a wide variety of subjects like why I might or might not want to buy a three three-row seat SUV or what it's like to work and manage a ice cream store or Or you know the possible these are all games that we've made in my studio or the the the pros and cons of using Wind energy in a community Or the absurd arbitrary nature of transportation security Or or what a what a public policy issue like the recent debate on on Visas in immigration which might feel like or the relationship between the petroleum industry and and natural disaster and so forth or or The politics of nutrition and you know, we make we're used to making characters in games Maybe this is a different kind of character than we're used to making in a game that we might you know put inside of a world and imagine What it might be like to live in that world and make choices about what we eat and what we do But they have to be able to afford those choices and in fact to be able to to change the the nature of the of the policies under which we live Through subsidy or through regulation or through being able to afford health care or not and so forth so these are some examples of Of games and what I think the potential is for games to address complexity and that's that's the the area of intersection that I see between Video games and civic engagement Thanks So I'll kind of start out with some some broad questions and Try to take us down some some pathways, but I imagine that we may and we may diverge from that as the conversation flows and Mar you mentioned the term Using video games or studying video games and making video games to quote impact education and Your terms Ian were things about Understanding complexity of issues and you kind of when you do the oil picture there There are a lot of different things from history to politics to science that you put in there And so if we think about the use of games Beyond entertainment that doesn't initially mean that they're not entertaining because I think that games Probably by definition. We won't get into the definitions today, but probably by definition or entertaining But but what what is what is impacting education? What is understanding these complexities? I I tossed around some words here Do we use games to quote inform is it's kind of like understanding some issue at some broad level as it to Enlighten kind of raise awareness of an issue or is it really to kind of educate and to kind of deliver a particular message as an example of the of the kind of ladder kind of an extreme example particularly with What might be considered civic engagement? We had spoken with a group some time ago who had very particular messages that they wanted to deliver through games They wanted people to be good to their neighbor and other kind of messages like that and their kind of model was somewhat antithetical from ours perhaps but it was like well You know if you do the wrong thing you should be corrected and kind of pushed back on the right path But there's a lot of people that kind of look at that's the way that you should kind of use games So how do you how do you see learning or educating or informing through games? Is what's what's the right word that we can kind of be most powerful with this medium? Well first of all, I don't think that games have to be fun So so let's get that definition out of the way And in fact just as a lead into an answer to your question Maybe the way to think about it is not to think about a way that games might be Educational or might engage people or what have you but to admit that there are probably Many possible ways that this could take place and then in fact if we've been looking at this medium and imagining that it's this monolith That there's there's video games and they're all the same essentially, right? I mean, you know when one video games the same as the next And you just choose them based on personal preference and use them to distract yourself instead of doing your homework or instead of going outside But we could we could say that of books I suppose to if we really wanted to and I don't think any of us would agree that that's the case So I think there's there's something like this spectrum of possible uses And experiences that we can have with video games the problem is that the the medium especially the Let's say the last 10 or 15 years of the commercial medium Haven't given us a great Perspective on that possibility space, but only only some very narrow portion of it So now we're looking for new domains and new terrain and we're trying to kind of find those open spaces And then when we find one we think oh gosh like maybe I can do something here because I'm going to borrow these conventions from this game and make and instead of you know wandering around and and doing favors for other people now You have to have a you know a nutritional plan or something and we're slowly kind of you know Tapping and and and opening up those spaces But in in large part there's a tremendous amount of work to do So I'm suspicious that there's a single a single approach or a single method For learning and games or what have you Even in one particular context we might find we might find many of them Yeah, if I had to I would I would support some of the points that Ian is saying but I would maybe Maybe not necessarily differ I guess my answer because I do agree with them that we should be looking at the possibilities But my answer when I think of that question is they do all of those they do inform They do enlighten and they they do educate They may do it in a different way and your intended message may not be always what the received message ends up being But I and I to go back to your other point as well about should games be developed with an agenda or with a mission in mind and I think of other games that like food force that was Clearly developed with an agenda in mind of understanding nutrition and poverty and so I mean I'm sure there are other games that And there's one right. I just said one game out of you know the infinity of games that we could Recommend or talk about or suggest up here on the panel. I guess my point when it comes to this question of can they be used? Beyond entertainment I Understand that question because largely of the type of people that I'm dealing with our politicians our educators our non-profit executive directors and in no offense to any of those folks Maybe a little Glad he said it But but the literacy level of how games can be used is not understood by all and What we have to do sometimes we're so close to the industry that we forget that and we we get bogged down in this Oh, this is a great game and and this is the mission and we lead with this what we want this mission to be first instead of thinking about the game more openly and so My challenge is Educating people that there are reasons to play games beyond Entertainment and I think that is a realistic challenge that people should start having a smarter more Engaging and transparent dialogue about as long as we continue to have politicians across the country who say no, you know across this nation that Say no to PlayStation and they really just don't get it or they read their their their staffers notes take it from someone That's been inside of Government they read points off of their staffers notes Until we start having more meaningful dialogue I think that entertainment question will continue to be asked because what is covered in the media what is covered in the Media is sound by culture what is covered in the media is negative negativity rules if it bleeds it leads All right. I mean this is the stuff that they say in newsrooms and so they don't want to talk about a Force more powerful, you know a video game about nonviolent struggle They want to talk about Grand Theft Auto and how that's ruining our kids And so I think my point is absolutely there is education Beyond just the entertainment realm and the minute we can start having more discussions about serious games or whatever the Standardization is on the on the classification of that category, which I also think is part of an issue Is it an interactive learning experience? Is it a serious game? What is it? That other side of the culture that's developing games for other reasons beyond entertainment is real and needs to have much more Communication to everyday folks that are making decisions About whether or not these games show up in our educational school systems or about whether or not these games have any meaningful Value when your kid is playing 40 hours of a video game in the household So absolutely my you know, I'm sorry to sound maybe kind of full circle But I just want to point out some examples that I do think that the question is valid and that it can do all of those And more I'll be on entertainment Well, I mean, I mean there's a lot we could say there are kind of two ways of looking at the intersection of Video games and politics one is the question What in what way can can video games about political issues? inform people or engage them with those issues another is to look at the the way that that politicians use video games Rhetorically without any concern for the content of any individual game, and it's just very convenient. I mean, you know, it's a Such low hanging fruit really for Someone seeking elected office to to point to video games as a kind of values issue Especially, let's say you're you're trying to establish yourself as some kind of a centrist You know who's interested in family values, and I'm not gonna name names It's very convenient and there's very little to be lost really at least it would seem that way because the the you know Give games are for kids right kids don't vote. You know, this would be the kind of kind of line of thinking So if we imagine that there are those two those two camps one of the things that surprised me so much about the Both the kind of game game research community and the industry itself is how much we are willing to go ahead and accept the Frame of the politicians rather than to make our own and to spend a bunch of time trying to defend games and create these oral whole organizations around you know trying to Lobby for for a game advocacy and for game players as a kind of demographic group that deserves protection And I just I just think that kind of line of thought is totally wrong-headed Not in its spirit, but in its strategy and we should we should we should just go after a different frame For the medium and as part of that make new examples of it Or point out the the existing examples that do something different. That's much harder to argue with So you mentioned there that games are for kids And so if we're thinking about an audience who were who were kind of targeting with games for civic engagement I mean it seems kids is the kids are and we can think of kids is As I get older at kids get So maybe I'll call kids anything up to 25 at this point So is that is is that and should that be the target audience and if it's not if it's only one among many How do we break out of that given that there's that is the or is that the prime video game audience, right? No The short answer short answer short answers. No I mean the longer answer requires a bit of explanation, I think Because we we we do have a lack of media literacy As you pointed out around the medium and also a very short memory. It turns out very short cultural memory about it the the video game as a forum the computer game When it when it first appeared in in I mean commercially in the early 70s I was solely for adults These were games you played in in taverns And they they shared much more in common with with pinball and with darts and with that sort of activity then they did with anything else and Some of those were translated for the home by the mid 70s With the idea of kind of bringing them home bringing pong home And that was where the Atari that was the whole idea behind the Atari was was taking some of these popular Arcade games and making it possible to experience them in the home I'm hopeful that we can just turn the rest of our conversation really into a conversation about the Atari You all believe what I found in there and Actually, I know exactly what you found in And the The the the arcade culture of the early 80s which had the same kind of you know, we had the same negative reactions to oh, it's You know destroying youth and in fact one of the first examples of video game controversy And now I'm just completely digressing is In 1976 there was an arcade coin-up game called death race That was kind of loosely based on death race 2000 which was a film of sorts And and you would it was very crude in its in its visual appearance and you had this sort of car that you could drive over these I think they were described as goblins or ghouls or zombies or something But you drove cars it's the first game in which you could drive cars over people And it was it was tremendously controversial and it was eventually pulled and there's a lot we could say about it So in that way that that kind of transition started to happen even in even in the mid 70s but there's a long kind of complicated relationship between the games industry and and the toy industry and whether they are or aren't toys and Sold at the toy fair, but also at the consumer electronic show But it's not until the mid 80s It's it's really Nintendo's fault that we think that games are for kids because when when it is it went when they Resuscitated the market in the mid 80s with the with the Nintendo entertainment system They did so by kind of backdooring into the toy market with this robot and then imposing a Licensing scheme that required published titles to be essentially vetted and approved by them and there's there's a tremendous untold history of censorship in the in the In these games of Nintendo sort of decided oh well no you can't have that in the game because it's not appropriate for our audience So you know this happened over time But I think what it shows is that you know actually if we if we just think back 30 years We see a medium that was entirely for adults and now we have no memory of that whatsoever So it's my inclination that we can we can simply forget We can we can dismiss this claim that video games are for kids and instead ask What kinds of video games might be useful for different kinds of people in different contexts? I think we'll pick up that thread in a second. Well throw it over to Mario everything to add on Who's our audience? Yeah, I think I Think the approach to that shouldn't be limited by an answer Because the audience is that widespread and if you are to look at any of the if you follow industry statistics and believe those sources You know, they would tell you that the average video game the average age of a gamer is what 30 33 33 years old I believe is this the statistic So that gives you an idea of maybe who the what the average age of a gamer is but when you ask me Who should be playing games? My answer is not the kids because they're already doing it My answer is teachers should be playing games. That's that's what I think I think of I think Civic activists should be playing video games. I think church leaders should be playing video games. I think people that run nonprofits that Disseminate money around education and poverty and technology strategies should be playing video games Whether it's someone on your staff that you trust that's younger than you or you just don't have time to do it So be it but I think the discussion and gaming shouldn't be seen as just a recreational activity It should be seen as a time of reflection and study And research and understanding and there are enough forums. There are enough people doing great things To to have enough of a start to have people that don't traditionally play games So I think that's the to me. That's the audience. I try to focus on I Watched the kids because I love to watch how they play games and that gives us fuel to understand How does that start to influence civic media? How does that influence their citizenship? How does that influence their moral values and and so it's great to see whether they're on a handheld game That's connected through the internet with playing with people from other cultures or they're playing on a cell phone Or a laptop or or a console. It's really invigorating to watch that But I think so many other people aren't seeing the same energy the same creativity from quite frankly kids that we write off Kids that we are willing to just write off I'm not you know, many of the many kids Play games that have access to them But you'll be surprised at how many kids you may not think have access to a four hundred dollar gaming console And and that trumps everything else in the household Believe it or not and you know, it's when you go through some of the different areas of The country and seeing how different kids are interacting with games. It's very interesting I mean, it's it's so I think to answer your question and we can get into some of those other areas But to answer your question, I think teachers Really should start playing them in nonprofit leaders and and if we can get a if someone could help us Maybe Ian and maybe we can get MIT to start this But if we can get like a a congressional land party that would be like that would go a long way like if you You know if we could just get Congress to stay up late one night and just and maybe we just take it to Capitol Hill And we just do a land party there But and I'm joking right But that's but see that might not be such a bad thing, you know I said they would send their staffers But you know, some of those staffers are influential staffers So yeah, maybe the Congresswoman or congressman can't get over there But maybe they could send their staffer it was if it was made appealing enough and the message was sent clear enough So that we could start that education process, but those people I think are the ones that need to play games That's who I'm talking about Yeah I mean the I would just want to follow up because the the idea of of teachers and and parents and people in their positions of so-called authority to To become game players is really important and it's not hard to convince yourself of this I think because we we you know when think about being a parents You know you you might might read to or with or with your kids or you might be concerned about the things that they're reading or Watching at the cinema or on television and the reason that we can make those judgments that we that we can make decisions Like oh, no I don't I don't think this movie is right for my class or for my child is because we have tremendous deep literacy in those media and we've watched them And we've seen a vast kind of array of different kinds of films already a number of different kinds of books and understand the Conventions how they work what it means to go and see something what a director's work is like compared with someone else's and so forth So the only way to develop that with games is to is to play them And there's there's other benefits that we get that we just don't we just don't have and it's it's the idea of being They're on the couch Or next to next to the computer with a with a with anyone with a child or an older an older kid who Who is having an experience that needs to be worked through in some way so I mean if I've got a story if you can indulge me Okay, I went through this very quickly earlier you guys know this game This is animal crossing this is the best game That's it We can we can you can all go This is an amazing an amazing game It's it's a game for the it's a commercial game for the Nintendo last last generation Nintendo console home console and You run away from home, and you go live in Animal Crossing So it's already perfect for your kids But there's a lot of amazing things about the game, but the first thing you do when you arrive in town is You you get a mortgage Because you don't have any money and you don't have anywhere to live And you meet Tom nook the raccoon real estate tycoon of Animal Crossing This is no problem. You know so it don't worry about it. I've got some huts here some little shacks, you know Just pick one you can work for me And you pay it off And so you get you get a house and then and then you've got to pay it off It's a tremendous amount of money and you do that by selling fish that you catch or doing favors for other people And and so forth and eventually after you pay off your mortgage He offers you upgrades and you see that the the two-story house here. I mean, you know why not why not expand really? So we've public we've played hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of this game my house Everybody can have their own character inside the game in the same world and one day when my son was five He came to me Just sometime, you know random time during the day. He said dad. I have a problem And I you know he was five he was just starting to be at the point where he would you know kind of come and talk to me about About such things. So I thought this is great. I mean I'll kind of puffed up my chest Yes, son Well dad he said I Can't even I know I can't even walk around in my house anymore. I I have because you know I bought that fruit couch And and you remember I got all those shirts and there's that lunar rock that you sent me and You know so the house that you get when you first start is very small And you can buy things to customize your environment right because who wouldn't want to customize their house I Can't I don't even have anywhere to move around in my house, but I need more space So I need I need to get a bigger house But the problem is that this is my son, you know the problem is I spent all my money Buying stuff. I don't have any I don't have any money left to pay my mortgage So there you go So what'd you say dad so we sat down we talked about long-term debt, you know and And he said oh, yeah, that makes sense and and you know he thinks credit cards are evil now And we even talked about compounding interest and he was horrified Because there's no compounding interest in animal crossing it We're able to make an analogy and say and that's why we have to sell your Nintendo Time to simplify yeah, we've got in my house We've got a throwaway day every you know some people do spring cleaning. We do throwaway day And it's inspired in part by Just try to divest ourselves of all the objects that we that we don't have but this is interesting right because all of this media that asks us to Customize something right who would make it yours and express yourself by having a pink phone and all that's kind of nonsense about that We're commercialization is the way that we that we become people You know this game which which appears to endorse that is really it was really much more complicated And my son saw right through it in some ways. He was five. It was fairly disturbing So yeah, this is a story about why you might want to play games with your kids so that you can you know Or students or whatever so when these experiences come up You know they need to be worked through So I'll actually kind of take that point of of your interaction with your son there and In the animal crossing is pretty open-ended you can make lots of different choices and you kind of Insinuated there's certain things that you like to do you like to decorate your house You like to upgrade but different people played in lots of different ways And that's kind of a characteristic of us of a suite of a kind of game Where you have lots of different choices that you can make some of which are some of which you value Some of which other people might value in the game may and may or may not kind of enforce those Kind of give you feedback on those whether those were good choices or not So in games that let you make kind of wrong choices I mean I guess classic one that's that side that's already been That's been cited once as Grand Theft Auto you can you can make choices in Grand Theft Auto Many of which are bad choices and there may not there may not be consequences to those and in this case here Your son kind of made some maybe bad choices and you were there to kind of help him guide him and point him in a positive direction And teach him about compound interest and So but what is kind of the role of games and sort of being should they be open-ended and Allow you to make these wrong choices. Should they kind of correct you back in the right direction? How open-ended should they be when you're allowed to make these kind of choices and Perhaps reinforce what may be conceived as negative behaviors, right? Okay, so there's a there's a number of ways to answer that question I mean, I think there are two things. There are two things about games that I think are very powerful Reparationally one is this model building idea that you can construct a model of how something works And it's always a claim about how something works somebody's idea of how some system works It might be a social system might be a mechanical system, but it's how something works like in this case how? How long-term debt works and you can interact with that and their world is constrained by that interaction and the second is Taking on a role and that role might be you know, the the space Marine or that role might be the Taxpayer or what have you and so by by not just living someone else's life for a brief moment But living a life that's constrained by a particular situation We can gain insights into what it might be like to be in that situation And there's I think a tremendous amount of empathy to be gained whether or not the situation is desirable so a game like Grand Theft Auto actually is a pretty interesting view into the you know, the experience of the the sociopath or or the idea that there are there are You know, there are consequences to criminal behavior. I don't think this is really what the game is about, but it's also it's also It does give the the player interesting choices to make in those contexts But this is maybe not maybe not the best example of a game For for kids for example, we wouldn't give this to our kids and say well, you know go learn about why you might not want to You know fire on the police You know, so they're they're also also context Context for them, but but one thing I hear a lot that I that I don't believe is that You know what video games should do or what their power is is letting people kind of construct their own world And then they can they can kind of make these environments that where they're being creative or something There's nothing wrong with that But I think it's it's the opposite thing that interests me the idea of living in a world You don't construct there isn't one that you would choose and an understanding someone else's perspective. I think that's really powerful Yeah When it's a piggyback off of that I think one of the things that comes to mind when you when you look at a game You know one of the one of the things that you're thinking about in the design process, right? Are the outcomes the the challenges and the rewards and and whether or not, you know Some people will say oh well, you know video games teach competition and and but it's really interesting because if you think back I want to say it was Macropolis 84 1984 will write and then That which became Sim City Really didn't have a winner or a loser and it was like that was one of the first times where you kind of witnessed a game that If you won if you won, you know, it was up to you as a player to kind of win It really wasn't up to whether or not you scored or racked up all these points or made all of this money and that was a whole that was a mind shift at that point of What the end product of a game can be and how I can engage in a game wait I can play a game and it not have to end this way. I don't I don't have to just be a loser or winner I don't know if some of you had a chance to play Fable when it was out on the Xbox, but that that was similar in that You know, you're in this little town and you can make these good decisions or you could make these bad decisions And you know as you made bad decisions you became more and more evil and as you became made good decisions You become you have more and more rewards theoretically the game was really kind of simple to play But the fact that it was giving kids an option other than just you win or lose Made you think differently about playing the game and I remember I don't remember recall exactly Who wrote these books, but I remember my mom giving me books when I was young that were like mystery books that if you Read a page and you chose an answer at the end of that page you would flip to a different chapter Can anyone help me out with your own adventure? Let's all do that one more time for Mario choose your own adventure. All right, thank you And I'm glad to hear that a lot of people knew what I'm talking about But that's that's kind of to make you kind of reflect on something that hopefully that you can gravitate to that If you've been through that experience, then you know, I'll know what we're talking about when we talk about the ability to make Choices and you know what's funny about that? I don't know about you, but I've read I've read all the options I did everything right. I said, okay Well, I'll answer it this way and go this way and then I would read the book again And then I would read it again and I would shoot. So what am I doing? I'm learning. I'm curious I'm going through these complex worlds in video games. So You know, I just think that It's we're at this great time now where we're starting to see more and more people that are in developing power create games that don't really Go off of the standard of you win or lose and so when we start talking about what are the education? What's the educational value? What can we learn? Clearly you heard. I mean that was a loss, right? I mean he lost his house. So I mean there's no question that that is an L In the L in the L column But at the same time it's a win because of the discussion that took place between between parent and child And so as games become more right now We're like pushing games to people and and as games really more adapt to to who we are our characteristics our personalities I think it'll start to see more of that Where am I? I'm digressing a little bit More of that response in terms of the rewards and what and what those rewards may or may not be as opposed to Rewards that are dictated by the game designer. They now can be dictated by the game player Well, you know the the the problem of of doing Doing things in a game that we that are undesirable socially undesirable or what have you? It's been a real problem for me as a designer dealing with with publishers and what not doing the kinds of The kinds of games that we do I was looking for for an example, which I can't find easily, but The idea that when you when you perform an action in a game, it's it's not real It's it's representational and the decision that you're making is a decision framed within this possibility space of experimentation So you might make a choice that you know is it's not a choice you would make In your own life or you play a role that is not one you would play in your own life in order to see See something from a different perspective and and I've had this many many times Backfire in designs so Just one example is a fear in other words is a fear of of Representing things that might seem undesirable So we were doing this this this game at the studio recently for a major that published it eventually got published on a um, I guess what I'll describe is a major online news media organization Yes, what it might be Hint I live in Atlanta and It was a game about wildlife track trafficking Which is an interesting topic a really interesting idea and Interesting problem because there's sort of these ambiguities of not there's a lot of moral ambiguity You know, it's easy to say well trafficking illegal animals is wrong but then when you're in situations as a trafficker where you've got family to feed and and And there are other kinds of political and social situations up for grabs Then you know the the grayness of that decision stands out and this game initially Express that and then slowly slowly slowly slowly didn't as we move further and further further into the process And eventually when it was released you can you can find it You can find it online It was essentially almost just the just as if the The idea was inspiring some sort of experience that would be on a webpage, you know, so it could be sticky or something Which is too bad. It's really unfortunate. There's a lot of a lot of examples of this I mean maybe I Can move on or I could sure yeah, so I think we're we're hearing our halfway point and I want to turn it over to the audience shortly and we discussed briefly in our conversation about what would qualify as as You make games and you kind of deal with kids and kind of Helping them make games and learn What how do we measure our success in these cases? You know, what are whether it's whether it's Quantitative measures or just kind of things that we get as feedback that we know that we're kind of we're successful in delivering our message or educating our audience If you want to go first maria. Yeah, I mean I can I'm not I'm not the academic In that in that in that traditional regard in terms of my learning, but I can say Anodotally with the program that we did specifically in watching kids Develop games or want to play games and I want to actually pursue learning around games There was immense anecdotal evidence about the power of the medium We're talking about kids that are in underserved areas that don't have all the means That many other folks do and yet and still their desire and their passion for learning was off the charts When there was something relevant that could tie into the process of why they need to know an integer The process of why they need to know what the x and y axis is and and and this thing called the plane and If they want to move an object across the screen, that's called animation that involves physics and so It was it was startling because we had we didn't go to areas and say Hey kids You know join this program and you're gonna become a video game developer. That wasn't what we said I mean, we just said come to this program if you want to if you want to and And so we ended up having some kids that came to the program because they wanted to but then we had a body of kids That were forced to come and that was the most interesting dynamic because kids that want to be there as we all know are Totally different than the kids that feel like this is a waste of their time So when we started seeing the mind shift in students that felt initially that this was going to be a total waste of time especially girls Especially girls the word video game locks them up. I mean for for the girls that we Experience I know that there's plenty of women that are in the games industry and it doesn't lock them up But for for these girls a lot of them. They saw it as oh, that's something my brother does That's something my uncle does, you know, I don't play games But the minute you start telling them you could create your own character. What would it be? Or you could create your own storyline. What would it be? It's a whole different discussion. And so when you Put these kids into those environments anecdotally my my Feedback from that experience. I mean we have surveys that we did and We're working with the university partners now to try to really get the you know That quantitative that real third-party research to come in and support some of the anecdotal things that we we've seen But clearly kids are soaking up this medium and they want to do more with it They want to learn with it. They want to express themselves through it. They want to change Society by using it and that's a major major statement so anecdotally Video games in education and in video games from what we've seen from the kids It's just you know, I mean we have kids now saying mr. Armstrong. When are you coming back, you know And so it's hard now because what's to leave behind? How do we follow that momentum? How do we continue to to make that kid continue to progress on and so I Get caught up with a little bit when I talk about those experiences because there was a lot of blood sweat and tears to make that Program happen off of a off of a light bulb that we thought would work coming out of the the video game conference at E3 and and that's probably to me the best testament of This medium is on to something if it decides to have an Obligation beyond the entertainment realm and it would help if you know people like the ESA. I'm sorry Call out the entertainment software association, but I just did if they could take a moral obligation like other media Does with video games we might see a little bit more increase But that's my we'll save that for the Q&A, but that's my anecdotal evidence of what I've seen in the classroom Yeah, I mean certainly watching people Listening more than watching players after they play the game and Trying to understand the way that they are Framing conversations about the topics that might have been at work. I mean the example of Long-term debt is one, but there's plenty of others. I found in my work one of the stories I'd like to tell is during the the dean campaign four years ago When when we did this this video game We which was the first The first official presidential candidate video game right at the time Had a lot of problems, but one of the one of the things that came out of Watching people play in which we could do online or they talked about it on on on the blogs and the other websites and things Because this is a game about grassroots outreach because that was what the dean campaign was about and there was this this backlash of kind of requests. Okay, well all this shows is that There's a way to campaign give me something give me something about policy So talk to me about about what you're about as a candidate or why can't I just change the names of the signs? You know to Q Sinich or anyone else of my choosing isn't it the same game really? And so I thought that was very interesting and I collected All of these all of these conversations there were dozens of them and sent them up to Burlington December 2003 and said okay here you go. Here's the this is the the next stage of your campaign right here is Very quickly before Iowa talking about The platform and they said no no no we just need more people we just need more people So so we make the claim at my studio that we first saw the downfall of the dean campaign a month before they did You know and there's stuff like that So there I think there are a ways of watching discourse and I'm not interested in anything Numerical here. I'm interested in seeing the ways that people engage with problems, but that said I'm also a pretty patient person And I I don't believe that we're going to see this medium cash itself out right away I think that that video games are a type of human expression and Like other kinds of human expression They're gonna find their place in history And when we when we read poetry or we watch films that have been made either recently or or very long ago They speak to us in ways that that The creators couldn't have known So I'm willing to to to wait this out and and imagine that what I'm doing I'm doing because it's important to me and might be important later to others All right, did you have one more thing you want to say before I turn over the audience? Okay, so I'll open it up to two questions from the audience Do we have a mic person or I guess we have mics on either side? So here we go I'm Rob Dardy gamer national rake tech and player. It's just a kind of fanatical thing I've never been able to like go since taken to but um one of the things that I was really interested in with the you were talking about is Obviously the concept of games not having to be fun Specifically, I don't know if you guys played Final Fantasy Tactics PlayStation 1 Ever okay, it's basically just chess except on more levels and it's a game that no one ever really seems to enjoy But they still play for 120 hours per each game because it's so much about Building up, you know the abilities of your characters and being able to tackle of the challenges and things like that It's perfectionism thing, but you can never complete it So completionists will play this game for hundreds of hours and never get to the point where it's ever really done and then on top of that the concept of As games have gotten to the point where it's no longer the same sort of technological adolescence as like cinema at the beginning It was very gimmicky now games are starting to branch out to becoming more of an art form And the ways that people teach things may be very different than you know We would normally expect like even something like Grand Theft Auto Which people just are ready to harp on at all times teaches things like resource management And I mean the concept of passive income was a totally foreign concept to me until Grand Theft Auto I would never have learned about that economic concept in education in school with the accepted Grand Theft Auto That just kind of happened But there are two specific games I wanted to talk to you about they tie into the whole fable concept of Playing through a game for different reasons and if you're a good character good things happen bad things There was an old series about ten years ago came out for PC called fallout The whole concept is post nuclear Holocaust RPG where you make different decisions Some of them are for the good of people some are for the bad of people But the storyline changes depending on what happens with that And they're releasing a new version of that for ps3 and Xbox everything the new generation of games next year But it was really interesting that the first game that I ever played like that that introduced the concept of karma and good decisions Changing the world around you versus bad decisions changing the world around you I feel like that's more impactful than watching it on a movie like for example Siriana there's a movie about oil and all the negative things that happen with it But it's not as engaging as when you're a part of it And there's also another game called army of two which the other game wanted to talk about Which is all about private military corporations and the concept that in one board You may be trying to protect people because that's what people are paying for But the next highest bidder in the next board you have to assassinate the people you were just protecting and all of the Aspects of that where you just go for the highest bidder it brings a lot of social concepts to light So the thing I'm trying to tie together with these is how do you imagine games as they elevate to becoming more of an art form? impacting the next generation of gamers And using that art form to try and bridge out and create and stir up thought within the gaming community instead of just This is the boundaries that we've set up for you as a world to work within and then what can you achieve within that? Yeah, I mean, it's a great examples of ways that the The commercial industry even in the last year has has been moving in in these directions There's a risk though that some of these some of these examples, not necessarily the ones that you cited Are kind of you know simulations of of real ethical or moral dilemmas rather than then engagement I've always had a problem with the sort of karma mechanic because I mean Moral questions are not globalized, you know, they're they're the personal in some way, but but your question, you know is very very big And and you know the there's there's I mean any answer would be speculative For my part what I've chosen to do is to Completely ignore and and deny the idea of the gamer I just refuse to believe it. There are not gamers. There are people who might play games sometimes But there are not gamers and I think the quicker we we were just Stop using that frame to talk about this medium the better off who will be Yeah, I mean it's to back up Ian on that point I you know all you have to do is look at say Nintendo and look at the Explosion behind the Wii their their latest console that really if you look at the design of that Has everyone is it safe to say everyone here has seen an ad or a promotion or something about that? Okay, so you know how it kind of works in that it's different in its approach to how you play a game and and I say that to say that They think of people as players Not necessarily as gamers to go to the one con one comment that you make I do think it's You know you raise this really interesting question about karma and about decisions that you can make in a game that can Impact the world or impact others. I mean I even think of I even think of wow and some some other games That kind of go along those same lines And I do think that there there there are things that you can learn Obviously within that that process, but where things Down the road, you know as it gets more graphically intense and more and just intense overall and then you have high definition and then you have the whole thought process of You know web 2.0 and people want to collaborate and do more and Participate and how that may start to evolve in games I would totally be speculating on where I would see it going as well But I can say that people want that to happen and they it seems that way that consumers want that to happen and want to Go down that path So I think you raise you raise some some really thought-provoking points I don't have more of a definitive answer for you, but Something that we continue to need to follow certainly because those are major points that you raised Thank you. We have we have long queues on each side So I'll just ask the speakers to who are gonna ask questions to be as succinct as you can in your in your questions I'm interested in a very specific use of games with adults working with young people and that's where Adults help young people navigate It's typically bureaucratic institutions by making a comparison to games so for example the college application game and At times that can sort of bend It can kind of bend towards a more crass definition of game where gaming the system is you're sort of like hacking the system or something Like that, but it can be very effective for teaching students to be Strategic inside of those institutions the concern I have and I wonder about your experiences Maybe Mario speaking to your experience with young people How do you help them be strategic inside of that using that game analogy strategically without Stopping them from their natural impulse to question the efficacy of those kinds of institutions stopping them from you know I worry that we might be deteriorating their ability to question or have a reformist approach because they're always gaming the system One one thought to that would be You know it's interesting we didn't do that In our program, so it's hard for me to really you know understand that because I mean I understand what you what you're saying What you're asking but we didn't do that in our program in fact we did the we kind of did the exact opposite we took kids and Had had them reflect on Part of what we did that I think helps to answer this question is we had them reflect on the images that video games represent of them and that was a different way for them to finally actually question themselves and Question the process so we wanted their curiosity to come out. We we didn't stifle it As much as you know, I hope we did and it didn't seem seemed that way So I don't know if I'm the best one to answer that question because we didn't really have that type of experience Which is which is a good situation to be in but maybe Have you have you have you have you read Mackenzie works book game gamer theory? Okay, you should you should probably read it because he makes He makes a similar kind of point, you know that the one thing that that games do is show show us How the whole world has become kind of a game that we where we try to maximize resources and things like that and But I think I think you know since I believe in representation I'm one of the few people left it seems to That when we when we frame Processes as games we when we when we abstract them to the level of representation We also show or we have the potential to show the arbitrariness of those processes or or or the way that they're connected to particular historically culturally contingent scenarios that would would then Lead us to moments of possible questioning and reform But it is it is certainly possible just to accept the game And and to take it at face value. This is this is one of the points that Ken makes in in the book It's it's which definitely worth a read Hi, so Ian in the in the example that you gave with your son and crossing Obviously, you know in that particular situation it was your input that helped your son reflect Upon what was going on. He probably couldn't have looked inside himself and learned about compound interest You underestimate So When you're when you're building a model Obviously not everybody has access to a mentor who can you know help them walk through the model and sort of think critically about it When you're building a model, how do you build a model that encourages that kind of self? That sort of self-reflection that self-criticism. It's very easy to build a model that you learn nothing from here's this system I poke it it responds in these ways, and I have no idea why How do you keep it engaging and and sort of bake that into the presentation of the model, right? That's a great question the I think that there's probably not one strategy, but the the idea of Providing feedback in in games or in software in general has usually been a question of efficiency, right? We ask how can we make sure that the user knows what to do next and it's clear that this button Does this thing or what have you in fact? There's a there's a there's a joke. This is nothing to do with the topic There's a joke about HCI the game designers tell about human-computer interaction. I apologize if there are any HCI researchers or professionals in the room and And it's something like goes goes something like this, you know if if if if game design was left left up to HCI Then all games would have a button that said press button to win That One's yours you can you can use that one. That's a good one to have in your pocket. Anyway You know so so we're not doing that when we when we design these systems that have many possible outcomes But yet we have to leave traces of of the outcomes that have occurred And I think the question you asked is a is a is really an untapped It's an untapped design challenge because what we're looking for is not The maximization of a particular kind of resource nor the kind of free movement do whatever you want, right? You can do it ever it's fine, you know But rather a recognition that that choices matter and when choices take place We have to give we have to provide feedback for what's happened So when we were working on this fat world game, which is the politics of nutrition game, which is based I mean Significantly stolen concepts from Animal Crossing there, you know, we've got this world and we asked this exact question and We decided that we would that we would build the the feedback into the social model that we wanted to represent So for example, let's say that you want to know how what your health is like because how else can you know if the decisions you're making? You know the nutritional decisions you're making constrained by your income based on your social class are caching out and But the problem is that if you can't afford to get the health care then you can never know anyway And so so that's a model that's in there Although if you're if you're wealthy then then you can actually you can go and just do whatever you want because the way that you Vote in fat world is with money basically So so it's a perspective that you could see from multiple places And then we've tried to we've tried to build a model so that that users will have a reason to go and look at it from Multiple different perspectives. I don't know if it's going to work or not, but but what we've had to go at at least Henry, okay I wanted to pull us more deeply into the space of civic engagement. We've talked a lot here about games less about civic engagement So two questions that I think are interconnected one sort of plays to Ian's card the other to Mario's on the inside There hasn't been a lot of Follow-ups on the Howard Dean game in this election We've seen more creative uses of my space and social networks more creative use by YouTube by the candidate So it invites us to think about what are the affordances of games for various kinds of political processes How do we read games against other kinds of civic media in other ways of communicating ideas to the public on Mario's side? I see it the Urban Games Academy was pushing in part to diversify the games industry So what perspectives are we not hearing because the games that are currently exist reflect the viewpoints of particular segments of the population So how does it matter what is it matter who has access to the ability to create games that might engage us with the political process? Or what are the consequences of a world where some people have the ability to express their ideas through games and others don't? So I just throw those open as a ways of getting us to think about the civic engagement part of our topic a bit. Mm-hmm Yeah As it relates to I mean some of the startling statistics if you don't know Survey was done by the International Game Developers Association about diversity In the industry and what you see is that there is less than 10 percent female There is about 2.1 percent African-American and 2.3 percent Hispanic and I'm running a blank on some of the other stats right now But that gives you that kind of gives you an understanding of the picture And we're talking about what an 11 billion dollar or more industry So when we talk about how that impacts the discussion or how that impacts the development of games I mean one can point to and I don't like to always use this example But it is probably one of the best if not the best But it wasn't designed this way with with this question to answer and that is when you look at the team that developed Sims and you look at the game the Sims and how popular it is, but if you look at the Creativity behind the Sims the demographics of that creativity. You'll see a very diverse team More diverse than what you may see in many other places and and you start to wonder why well Why is that you know the number one selling game or why is that so successful? Is it just because it was a great game or was it really something there in the diversity of the perceptions the diversity of Experiences and the diversity of the backgrounds that made that game really successful And when you start to look at that in terms of a political discussion or a civic engagement First off, you know Kids need to feel that they have a voice And I think games allows them to feel that they do have a voice And when we put kids in the urban video game Academy and said create your own game You we came what they would come up with you know, they didn't come up with games that you would expect You you made some of our preconceived notions where oh, it'll be about music or it'll be about Commercialization buying clothes or fashion or latest gear and yeah, there was there were some of those but more and more what we saw were games that were about how to how to Not be how to impact poverty We saw games that were developed about how to clean up the trash in my neighborhood We saw games that were developed about whether or not do we make a decision to buy food or Pay the electric bill. So I mean these were very these they internalized their Experiences their thoughts their backgrounds and wanted to put that into a simulation of some sort and be able to try To master this complex world. So if you think about that and you start to Talk about politics and and and civic engagement in general You can see clearly that kids want to talk about issues that are affecting them And they may or may not just have the wherewithal to have those discussions But games creates a platform that they can relate to that they can have this discussion in a Surprising way. I mean when you sit down with them and discuss the narrative and the story Well, what do you mean by this? What are the challenges? What would be the outcomes? What would be the rewards? You really start to see a different student. It's amazing. So I think To answer your question. I think it's a powerful way of shaping at least their exposure to making an impact to society and And in all the different ways that they could make that impact to society through games Yeah, I was just I was queuing up some visual and I kind of just dropped visual aids for my response So I remember in 2004 in an interview of some kind Making the prediction that in the 2008 election every major candidate would have their own PlayStation 3 game That was wrong And I think one of the reasons why I mean part part of it is that We've gotten we've become distracted and I'll use that word distracted by by other trends in in computer technology including Social media and an online video and so forth But I also suspected that part of the problem is the attempt to go to the source the attempt to do this in an official way So this is a complex topic, but in some ways the idea of dealing with politics With the politicians in the way that I think games have the power to deal with politics Which is exactly to show what the public policy problems are at work rather than the campaign problems that are covering up the public policy problems How do we do that while we are still? Engaged directly with with the organizations or the campaign or the campaigns if I can get my my screen up here I've also You know so so as a response to that one of the things I started to do was look at the news media as a one one outlet for this We started working on this idea of news games these sort of small Games they're they're like it's just black right now. So that's by design These small games that that deal with with with current events and And that too has posed problems You know so the objects that appear in the of the objects that appear in the in the airport security game This is just a random slide. I picked the thing that the arrow is pointing to by the way Is is pressurized cheese and you may not know this But if you go to the TSA's website and look for a list of prohibited items pressurized cheese is on the list The object below it in is is hummus by the way You know is it a gel It's from the Middle East I don't know Anyway So you know this is a published game and and millions of people have played it But this is an object that did not appear in the game that was originally designed to and there are a lot of reasons for this And this is a game that was never published on the New York Times So there are There are challenges there are challenges dealing with with the structures the the structures of of of the news media and the structures of Of of the political media that I suspect we have to go around to some extent There's good. There's kind of a but I guess my answer Henry is we got to go punk rock we have to just do this and Not ask for permission anymore and not ask for endorsement anymore Which means finding ways to make that happen Financially having the time all those sorts of things here from the Museum of Science and one of the things that I do is introduce people to New science and technology and what we've been doing lately is showing people second life and other You know online worlds and I've had the experience of just a couple days ago I had it maybe a 75 year old guy who'd never played video games before saw a second life on the big screen and said How do I get this? I want this I've had little kids say I can make money in this game and There are games you mentioned the Sims people know about brain age and the we and other such things that they really get visceral reactions from people people who don't play games want these things and You've been talking about some of the kind of components of those things I'm curious about what you think some of the other ones are but the I think that the real basic question I have is if you had your congressional land party, what would you play? That's a great question a first-person shooter No I'm just joking. I'm just We're gonna see it so we're gonna see it tomorrow frag your congressman It would go over so well. I'm just joking I would probably You know part of me wants to go punk rock Part of me wants to go with all right We have to play something that they'll understand So part of me says if we have the staffers We'd go punk rock and we play something really neat and cool and engaging. We might play something like we might play something like Force more powerful, which might by the way we might play with Somewhat a congressman as well. It's a game about non-violent strategy how do you it's a simulation and it walks you through about ten different scenarios and You are a chief strategist and you have to learn all these variables and understand things that come out of city council things that may come out of a Dictator and how you would navigate this Simulated society to get your cause heard and dealt with in a non-violent way but You know, I would also want them to play a political game So that they can understand How more people could be educated about the political process. I mean, there are great games like like this. I remember Interviewing Henry in fact, I believe it may have been you Henry if correct me if I'm wrong but I remember hearing about a video game where a kid took the video game into The school and the video game was a politically charged video game a politically educational video game about the Electoral College and When the kid who found out and played the game by playing the game ended up watching the news started understanding why politicians were making certain trips to certain states and Why they would stop and maybe even not just where they went but what they're saying why they're saying it and So it was really interesting because the same kid that was playing this game then watching television and learning Took the game the school and was shut out by a teacher You know, so Had he had a I don't know a magazine about the same issue. I mean, I guess the magazine or book or you know any other Accepted piece of material probably wouldn't have been fine and not even really knowing what the game is about so there's this You know issue of of of that gatekeeper mentality as well And so I think if I had this LAN party I with Congress I would certainly want them to play a game number one that they can relate to and then Hopefully be able to play a game that would push their mind mentally as to the possibilities of what games could do whether that's a pain distraction game that's being developed at some of this at the hospice at with breakaway games in Hunt Valley, Maryland with Mercy Hospital Which is a pain distraction game for kids that are going through Procedures that are uncomfortable and doctors are finding better success rate because the kids are playing these pain Distraction games that are pleasant and keeps them relaxed. So I would want them to play things that would Take them out of just the the the military concepts and the simulations But also kind of show them the educational value in games and where that could ultimately go And hopefully get a few of them to understand what the potential could be In sticking with anything in which he can frag his congressmen, so yeah, I still think that's a good choice I have to I'm Joe Beckman. I do some community organizing in a couple of communities around Boston I have two very different questions the first question is sort of I'll ask them both and then you can deal with them in any order You want One is to take off of Henry's point 12% of the voters voted on Tuesday Is it an unfair? Criterion to measure the effect of civic media or in the next five to ten years to expect that ratio to be higher And how would that happen? That's the first question. The second question is Why is there no game for school evaluation? There are standardized tests, but why not standardized interactive measures which could be a game and could be online Why is it not happened? Well, there's the answer to the second question is is two-fold The optimistic answer is that there are many researchers in the learning sciences working on on methods of Assessment for games that might lead to such a thing sometime in the future the more pessimistic version is that Education is our educational system is broken So I don't know that we want to encourage such a thing anyway The answer to the first question is I think yes and no And that's that's all no I think yes, it's reasonable to imagine that we might look at something like voter turnout as a as one aspect of of people's engagement with With politics and and and and civic life generally whether we're talking about games or not But the problem I think There's nothing to do with games really is that voting public that that kind of civic service Appears to people to be so decoupled from the policy decisions that affect their lives that it's almost Reasonable to imagine why they don't bother and how can we how can we deal with that fundamental problem instead of the problem of the numbers at the voting booth Yeah, I can't hear you either I guess the question was even if you deal with that second issue that you mentioned How how would you actually engage people in that process then? How would you get to see that? Oh, well? I mean, I mean, that's I think I'd like to think that's what I've been trying to do in in my games about politics You know to to demonstrate that the way that we frame Public policy issues is broken. So when we talk about when we talk about Obesity and we talk about it as an issue of self-control that that that has to do with people's activity or lack of it that we kind of cover over issues of Socioeconomics for example and and you know, hopefully by doing this We ratchet up people's demands and they make different demands on on either their elected officials or just the ordinary people around them I mean, it's certainly it's certainly not a clear path for me to be. Yeah Yeah, I Don't really have too too much more to add on to Ian other than an example that I can look towards Where in? Baltimore for example, they have been talking about and have created and an online space specifically for high school kids that have an interest in politics So there's a little bit of a difference there right because that means we're already saying they have an interest in it So I understand that but even still and what they started what we started with Mayor O'Malley at first was just these open chats that we would have with with youth and Interfacing with government and interfacing specifically with City Hall on specific issues And I think they've evolved that program now to it's it's beyond asked the mayor An issue they've really harnessed that program now to take these students that come from various backgrounds throughout the city And bring them into City Hall to really beyond a typical school tour To expose them and actually put them to work in their classes about issues that the City Council have actually dealt with Which is From the teacher response that I've received has been interesting and seeing the debate and the discussion that the students are having About the political process, so I don't know if that's go if that's part of the answer that will See more people want to participate in in the political culture But I think that's one thing that would be would be looked at as a noted example that's working Well, at least in Baltimore I Wish I could say over no, I mean It's to it no it had I mean the answer for that question is it hasn't changed I mean we had low turnouts as Well, so we don't know if that's the answer yet But from the discussions that we're hearing from students that that don't care about politics versus the students that are in this program And even some of the students that didn't think they needed to be in it But we're kind of just like coaxed into it you find that they're more engaged and at least more aware of Issues that are happening. So it has brought a little bit more of a level of transparency To to how government operates and I think that's important I mean we took them into a room inside of City Hall where we call We don't call it the war room. It's That's what they call it It feels like the war room But it's a it's a it's a An opportunity where all the agency heads of of the city come before a panel and They do this once a week and they have to pull up their spreadsheets and It's total transparency. And so how many how many potholes were covered this week? Well, X didn't get done. Well, then why is your overtime so high if X potholes weren't weren't covered and so when the kids can actually see that this type of dialogue and Transparency and holding people accountable was happening those kids and that was a subset of the main group but those kids had a more engaging conversation and debate and interest in watching the news and Understanding what people are saying and reading the paper and going to online websites and participating So whether or not that changes to voter turnout would be the hope, but I think that was a that's a good start Hello, I'm doing a project right now where I'm working with and it's called a youth activism design Institute And we're working with a bunch of young people that already are incredibly politically sophisticated running political campaigns Doing youth organizing and what we're trying to do is have them use the game design lens to reinvent their tactics around organizing and I'm wondering what kind of experiences have you guys had and having or Of helping young people think like game designers Sort of getting young people to understand second-order dynamics on the magic circle like you know that the Lexa kind of game designers have Have you what kind of experiences have you had in sort of lending that lens to people who already are politically savvy? and and and what would you Suggest we do or are there any particular tools or techniques you think we should be employing around their project? I'm sorry. Can you just clarify the goal of the project a little more basically? We're trying to so young people are doing good work on the ground But they don't necessarily always like the way they're approaching organ ads and sometimes they think it's dull Sometimes they think it's too much like the way adults do it and they like games and they're interested in games But they want to try to figure out how how do game designers make their games fun? Like what other things they think about their interest you're interested specifically in games about New mode new methods of organizing. No, no, it's about They understand organizing. Yeah, and game designers understand game designers Right and our premise is that if young people understood what game designers understand about design And how do you how do you make systems that that attract people and make them play something for 120 hours? Maybe they could do that to get people involved in campaigns in ways that they can't right now So we're trying to do that kind of translation And I'm wondering have you had any experience with that if you have any suggestions for us around it makes sense that makes sense I think Mario knows the answer I thought with I thought with your line of questioning you you had something coming towards him Gosh, I was ready to I wasn't ready to go first. I think I'm I Transparent I Used my strategy on you. You did you game to me and it worked Let me see if I could take a shot at this I think what I think what I understand your question to be is a Great one number one because I think it reminds me of the similar question that we were asking of how do we use the video game development? Process to tie that to core academics And so that that brings you into well what's the mindset of the gamer or of the designer rather and and and what excites them and you know But it's tough because you know what you think excites them May not really be what they're working on at the time I mean and I'm not to say that they don't have a passion for working on the game But the game is is hot pizza when it starts out when you're in that Embryonic stage and you're having discussions about the game and and you're designing your thoughts and you're putting it all out But after six months, it's the same pizza and it's now cold pizza and so You bring up a good point because how do you maintain and you can speak to this How do you maintain your interest your energy and your excitement with something that has small steps that need to be that need Have been taken in order to create a big accomplishment and a big a goal at the end. I you know for you I wonder if You might have to I'm gonna shift it back. I'm gonna game Ian. I think on the mental side I think on the mental side Ian may have some ideas. I'm assuming but I think from from from From tools from tools that maybe you could use I would certainly look at games that are involved in exactly what you have these youth involved in I would I would certainly I mean come see me after this and and look at this game a force more powerful. This may Help help them understand The design and the energy and the fun that they put into This particular game which is all about accomplishing something of a common goal Which you're trying to do with these kids and being that they're already savvy It's just a matter of getting them around the right tools But you know one of the things that you may also want to look at our tools that are available like Alice I mean or or maybe even to step up from that like a personal learning additions of Autodesk these are our software that are out there, but are available and maybe you could Excite your kids or excite the youth to have them use the tools learn about the tools to see if they can come up With some ways of using the tools to help them with their they're organizing or just make it more engaging and fine But as it speaks to them the mentality You know it's hot pizza when it starts and it's cold pizza until it's time to release the game And then it's hot pizza again, so I don't really know what goes on in their mind throughout that process I haven't studied that side of of of that engagement. I Don't know what I don't have a good answer which is why I skirted the question but but I do want to note that the Katie Salon who was who's here a couple weeks ago, right and Game lab and the University of Wisconsin are working on a project that was funded by MacArthur to produce a game correct me here if I'm getting it wrong a Game that would that would actually enact some of the principles of game design itself And I'm not sure what the calendar is for that, but it's approaching some kind of state of So maybe keep keep some keep an eye out for for that as well Yeah, and maybe just speak maybe speak to game designers as well. I mean I can help you with that But I can help I'm more than welcome more than happy to try to point you to some resources That would be open to talking to you that are in there are I mean in all seriousness There are these books out there and there's one even that's called like, you know game development for teens You know which sounds all that must be right, you know, so it's definitely got the right title This is this is a black art Still for me, and I don't I don't know that that there are our straight answers anywhere Hi, Jane Koo from the Berkman Center for Internet Society at Harvard and I work a lot and I'm married to a lot of I'm married to only one person So we made a game about that Community and grassroots organizers Very skeptical a lot of different new ways of doing things and I remember we're going to one office where there was a comic strip on pinned up on the cubicle with two frames in the first frame it has Kind of a church basement, and there's there's a person who's saying oh, they're they're about to debate a new Law about abortion, and then you have all the people in the room like saying well I'm gonna I'm gonna you know call on my friends that have them right to their senator and You know I'm gonna basically go door-to-door and get people to kind of do something about this And you have the second frame and they say well, there's a there's a new kind of law You know about kind of also about abortion and it's like in a coffee shop and everyone's like Well, I'm gonna do my interpretive dance tomorrow about this and you know I'm gonna I'm gonna do a film festival about this issue and at the bottom of the Title for the comic strip is your why liberal lose And you can put aside the you know the illogical leaning of that particular comic strip But what I've some what I've been hearing about so far has been how game media Or any a lot of this kind of mass media in general can really shape or change attitudes And I'm not saying I completely agree with that comic strip But there is a feeling of well if you just make people aware of things or more knowledgeable things or just put it in their face That somehow magically something will happen and I'm curious if you could speak to basically is Where you see the mechanism between awareness of an issue or being more knowledgeable of something and then actually going and doing Something about it. What's the difference between doing the interpretive dance and making a phone call to your senator? Yeah, it's a great question The when someone says that's a great question when you ask a question, and they're not quite sure what to say next The the in my experience working with with With all all groups on on multiple sides of the political spectrum multiple parts of the political spectrum It's not so much about Different strategies. I mean everyone goes door-to-door and everyone puts out media. It's about the I think the Risks that we take when we do those things So I've had a number of of games about political topics effectively, you know censored into oblivion by by Democrats and then the work that I've done With with Republicans has really been interesting in showing me just how much more willing is kind of ironic, right? They're supposed to be conservative on how much more willing They are to accept a kind of boldness of speech So I think part of it is is honesty and and that that doesn't have anything to do with With games again anymore, although that maybe there's something we can we can get at there But yeah, this this framing problem of sort of, you know, we'll go and we'll talk about, you know An issue among ourselves At the coffee shop rather than go and muster, you know kind of strategic politically strategic Strategies to gain voter share and that sort of thing Is really a much bigger issue than I'm that I'm prepared to answer on here My name is Raffi Santa I work with the global kids So I've got a question that's been on my mind for a while now In looking at the world of gaming and those thinking critically about gaming specifically about gaming and how it relates to the social good I kind of see two strains of thought one is the games for a change Kind of outlook and one is the games and learning outlook and these really deal with two specific different kinds of ideas about or trying to teach one is about attitudes and perspectives and one is about skills and so you have People like James Paul G talking about games like full spectrum warrior now it teaches these incredible skills about You know what it means to embody the discipline of a soldier and what it means to embody, you know, all these kinds of specific skills around controlling teams And then you've got on the other side Games like Ian like you create that are persuasive games news games games with an agenda be a political or moral Social and they they're they're basically coming from a perspective that says we can through games convince people to act in a different way and so to me it actually looks like these two two standpoints are at odds with each other because if you take the games and persuasive games perspective and you apply it to the the first model where you've got these army games You're basically saying okay, so we're teaching people to kill And something like America's army actually explicitly does that and then the other side you're you're kind of saying Okay, so with games that are persuasive what kind of skills are they actually learning? You know, so I'm wondering if there's something that Might be on your minds that can rectify those two worlds I'm happy to report. There's a chapter of my book about this To which I might refer you I mean the basic basic answer I gave is that both the the idea of abstract skills and the idea of some kind of transfer of subject specificity or are insufficient and in fact, we need this a kind of a tight coupling between the The mechanics of the game and the and the the concept that it's relating that that aboutness always matters And we can't ignore it And at the same time once we admit that something is potentially educational Then it might have other kinds of we have to admit that there are these these other possible outcomes that also occur right, so I'm not terribly bothered by the existence of both, you know military games and pacifist games. They just simply have different agendas that work No, I think I think You know when you think about games for change and games for learning It's fortunately, I don't have to try to differentiate between the two quite frankly. I understand the question and understand why that's important and I think it Speaks to I say I don't need to because I'm so focused on the games for learning and for me for whatever reason when we're Dealing with the students in the games for learning that we're going through that is change Or it is games for change in not in the same definition that you subscribe described, but There is change that's taking place. So and a game is responsible for that change I understand it's not a specific agenda, but There is a specific agenda to what we want these kids to get out of the program. So I do see this Conflict if you will of that question, but I don't really see it Formulating itself through our students. I don't really see that happening in the classroom. What I do see with this dilemma is And you know, I don't want anyone to feel like their good work is going on the drains But I think that I just don't know that if we've reached a point where we have the right standardizations of the terminology For what we're trying to do here and I think part of that question brings up this issue of The language video game is the is the right term. Is that the term? No, I mean, that's good to know I mean, that's good to hear is that is that the term that we should say because the minute you say That term to some people Well, the only the only way we make any progress here is by investing some concept with meaning that grows You know, and if we start splintering Sprintling off different kinds of of topics and to hold different You know genres of a medium that have nothing to do with one another And I think we lose the leverage that we gain from from the other aspects. So I'm completely committed to that So let me ask one other question just to you this is serious game something we should stop saying Yeah Just wanted to make sure everyone was clear. Thank you for that concise answer Partially because the the our clothes is coming I'm gonna take one more question partially because Mario mentioned hot pizza recently, and it's gotten thinking ever since So sorry boss draw things to a close We'll take one last question and then I'll ask some closing comments I'm Michael Scholar with American public media and we've created Some journalism games games are powerful in that they're really good at teaching a system So if you want to teach physics as an educational game, you kind of give rules and then you let people apply them they're also great at teaching a system if Almost implicitly you create a situation you have someone living it and they learn the rules of the game They learn what it takes to win And I think that's what concerns me as we branch out into games for civic engagement Is that someone's writing the rules into a game that basically is implicitly teaching what it takes to win and Often the games that are persuasive games advocacy games Often teach a set of rules that that are in someone's interest And often I think actually turn people off from civic engagement one classic example is Games around elections and politics that always have a little person warning you that gee if you adopt this policy You're gonna get voted out of office So what we're implicitly teaching is that the rules of the game are to act like a politician We're not actually teaching people about the issues for example in that type of game and and where you should come out on issues Based on what's going to improve society or the like and I guess I raise this more to get some thoughts as to Trying to create a fine line for a journalism game That is an advocacy what is really about educating about Attempting to educate about the truth about the way the world works, but in a way that actually leaves Possibilities and openness games inherently are kind of closed systems where the rules get set and everything you do kind of works against the rules One thing I've been thinking about and haven't quite figured out how to do because the complexity gets gets Gets high very quickly is to have games that actually have open answers where users can actually create new scenarios provide new information About a game as they go. It's kind of akin to the Star Trek You know a movie where Captain Kirk rewrote the rules of the game because it was a game that had no way out And in some ways I think one of the problems we have in media today And with civic engagement and low voting rates is that people in some way feel that the rules of the game are such that There's no way out people can't actually influence politics anymore So I guess I'm asking some thoughts on whether or not there's an inherent structural problem in in Civic engagement games and that someone's got to write the rules that kind of implicitly hold a view of how society works This is the question we're gonna end on I guess I can say yes won't work here Yeah, I mean There's an inherent Conflict between Politics and policy forget about the games that are that's just there So what you say about about games about the political process I completely agree with you know what you learn is the What you learn is is campaigning you don't learn policy But I'm I'm I'm not sure that the answer is is to open up a system so that you can do anything with it I think that we have to we have to learn and we have to help other people learn that Just like any kind of artifact a game Makes it makes claims it has it has opinions and those opinions are Built into the rules and to the processes that are there by which the game works And we need to learn to read those and understand. Oh gosh, this is this is actually where the argument is located What is it trying to tell me about? The way the world works or the way that it might under someone's leadership or so forth Now I don't know Because all of those things are very specific It's going to be very very hard if not impossible to design some some metagame where all possible representations are available And moreover, I don't want all possible representations. I want someone's Single representation of an issue that they believe is right and want to condense me of and then I want a whole wealth of those that I can I can kind of interact with and make decisions between hopefully leading me to make real decisions or or at least the To to to facilitate others to make those decisions Yeah, my two cents I think on this our one I think I Don't know that I would want to play a totally open ended game either But I do respect the idea of being able to develop a game From my perspective and I do think what we need to start doing is letting more of People that play games be able to design scenarios within those games now granted There still are some rules about even just the design exactly what you can do in a game So it still doesn't really solve the answer to the scenario design, right? It's just going to ideologize that the question of what what kind of options are available Right. I mean so you're you're kind of still back to square one although you may have given someone the idea or the perception That they're really changing some things But I think on a bigger picture. This kind of goes to what I think is a problem in media And I think it's the diversity I mean there's several issues with with this question, but I think one is if you felt that news sources Were were more demographically made up of the society that you live in you would one could say that the perspectives of that news Organization would be more encompassing of its its communities that it serves And one could say the same thing about a video game in other words if you have a Democratic process throughout the design of a video game and you allow people to challenge each other with what the roles or the Outcomes or the challenges would be I think you you end up with something that leads towards Maybe where you would like to go, but doesn't ultimately solve That that that question that you pose But I do think that that's a real issue that needs to be addressed in the industry when I talk to game designers of different backgrounds and you speak to them be outside of the microphone or when the camera is turned off and you have a cordial upfront discussion with them the stories of You know some of the things that happen in game development remind you of Some of the same things that happen in other industries But when you hear about those the shining moments are those where you find that true diversity has been embraced by the company from the top and that has really found itself Drill down into the development of the games And to a larger library of potential games because one thing's for sure right we can't continue to just Create blockbuster titles. I mean that's that's a depth of the industry so things like persuasive games right not blockbuster titles By the way, yeah, but but no, but that's gonna that's going to obvious. That's clearly going to change No, that's going to change. I I firmly show you my wallet Stay the course stay Ian stay the course. I firmly have to believe that that's gonna change So I mean I hope that helps but also, you know there you look at Microsoft Who's opened up a little bit right X&A is a platform if you haven't heard of it This X&A platform is in theory supposed to allow people that want to design to be able to Take components of games that they play and be able to design upon them And then maybe even offer them up into the Xbox Live marketplace and what's interesting is you start seeing games that are not like What you would expect you start seeing games about issues and about things that are being discussed in the news So so I you know that doesn't fool the answer your question But I think that gives you an understanding of at least where I'm seeing some things and I think as long as it is your Is your newsroom diverse? We're working on it, but those are terrific answers. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, I think it starts there for me I want to meet Ian's kid Five-year-old genius So I mean, you know the just just to summarize some of the ideas the I think The important thing to realize with respect to games and and civic engagement is that this is actually a very different kind of computer medium Then the sort that we've been discussing primarily in In in this kind of conversation or in the in the broader Public discourse which is stuff like, you know websites and and and social networks and and these sorts of things There's something fundamentally different about about video games in the way that they represent what they do with the computer And their potential is is considerably untapped So I just want to draw attention to that as a kind of closing Comment that there's there's something that can be done here that hasn't yet And it's something that that I think takes advantage of Computers in a way that that other kinds of media haven't so now maybe it's time to to to do some catch up Yeah, I You know, I think in closing I think You know so much that my mind is racing to want to try to squeeze in right to close out with But I think as it relates to the theme of tonight's discussion We see a society where Access to technology is becoming more prevalent We're seeing a society where broadband connections make the speed of communication that much faster We're seeing a mobile society that's becoming wireless and you know when I walk around now and see Kids that are just we're just learning computers a year ago now telling me Mr. Armstrong, you know I know how to get RSS feeds That that tells me something about Their propensity their potential and their understanding of Technology as equates to information and when exposed correctly as that information can equate to Influence and empower them to make decisions. I think video games this meeting Filled with so many great questions have some some answers that just Aren't there because it's they need to be done they need to be developed It needs to be researched and this is a great exposure of the opportunity of what the medium of video games has to offer Civic engagement I go back to the one story When I asked the kid and I challenge any of you When you leave here tonight go and ask ask kids you don't talk to ask someone at the at the at the line at a Restaurant ask them when you're at the gas station ask them in public places if you were to create a game What would that game be and if you actually take notes as To what some of these kids? Dressed in various ways from various backgrounds Had to say I think many of you might be as shocked as I was and Optimistic about where things could go if the education and exposure could get to them at a level and at an age Where they're willing to accept it and be influenced by it. I'm speaking of middle school primarily So I think that's where I would like to Thank our speakers and of course the communications forum And thank you for a lot of great questions. Yeah, really it's great