|
CONTRIBUTE BLOGS
04/02/2009 18:22
by Marcia Stepanek
When in Britain last week at
the Skoll World Forum, I was
referred to a recent article
in The Observer written by
Joss Garman, the 24-year-...
03/02/2009 22:35
by Marcia Stepanek
As the recent copyright woes
of Obama poster artist Shepard
Fairey show, there's a war
raging over what some now are
calling a new art form in ...
02/16/2009 07:24
by Marcia Stepanek
I just finished reading an
advance copy of "The Blue
Sweater: Bridging the Gap
Between Rich and Poor in an
Interconnected World,&qu...
| |
60 Seconds With...
Suzanne Seggerman
Changing the Game
Suzanne Seggerman, a documentary
filmmaker who
worked on some of
historian Ken Burns’ early
projects, is the force
behind Games for
Change, which
advocates the
development of
video games that
let users experience
the lives of people
in need. Seggerman recently spoke with CONTRIBUTE about the new movement.
Why games?
Games let people live in new worlds
and try on new behaviors. You can
show someone a movie to raise awareness,
but it isn’t going to let them try
on a response. A game lets somebody
actually practice new behaviors.
Like what?
In Darfur Is Dying, you can experience
first-hand what it’s like to be in a
refugee camp where your family is dying
and you have to risk your life to go
out and get water. Another example is
Peacemaker, a game about the Middle
East conflict developed by a team at
Carnegie Mellon University. You can
take on the role of either the Israeli or
the Palestinian leader and understand
the kinds of decisions either one
of them might be forced to make. It
puts people into the decision-making
shoes of one, or ideally both, of the
leaders in that conflict.
What’s the impact?
A lot of young people play. In the UN’s
Food Force, kids aged 8-13 years old
are sent on six realistic
aid missions. It had more
than 2 million downloads
in its first couple of
months of release, and it’s
now up to 4 million. That
rivals some mainstream
games. A Force More Powerful,
a game created by the
International Center on
Nonviolent Conflict, is
also significant. It teaches
activists in the field
how to overthrow dictators,
how to resist tyranny, and how to
use peaceful resistance techniques.
That game aims to reach people in
Myanmar and Iran and North Korea
who are NGO or student leaders.
Darfur Is Dying (released in May
2006 by MTV’s college channel) has
had close to a million downloads by
now. In that game’s first month, thousands
entered an “action” area of the
game where they were able to send
email messages to politicians and demand
action in Darfur.
How did Games for Change start?
Barry Joseph with Global Kids, Benjamin
Stokes of NetAid and me, from
WebLab, had all been involved in the
Serious Games Initiative, which some
early game developers had started to
create games for non-entertainment
purposes: education games, training
games, corporate games, and the military.
The three of us were interested
in social change, so we came together.
We had an exploratory conference in
2004, and 40 people came. By our
third conference this past summer here in New York, we had more than
250 people attend, including people
from five departments of the UN,
two departments of the World Bank,
the department of biology at Yale and
others from very serious institutions.
Last year, the MacArthur Foundation
began funding game-related projects.
Corporate philanthropies are also
looking into this. People are starting
to realize that games are a fantastic
way to reach young people on their
own turf.
People have said that Games for
Change acts like the Sundance
Institute did for early documentary
film — in our case, a resource base in a
community of practice for games in
the public interest.
That’s why we’re creating a lab with
the New School here in New York
called PetLAB that will allow for the
rapid prototyping of these games, a
time-sensitive way for nonprofits to
see what a game can do in a very quick
turnaround format. If they like what
they see, they can engage students or
developers to create it for them. We’ve
already got a couple of projects under
way, one with the EPA and another,
possibly, with a large Hollywood studio.
PetLAB will be a major center at
Parsons, the first of its kind dedicated
to games and social change.
Games are a new medium. We’re
where we were with documentary
films in the late 60s and early 70s.
Game content is becoming more
culturally significant and sophisticated.
We’re just at the beginning of
that now. Nonprofits shouldn’t be
left behind.
|
