Two great videos

In the last couple of days, I have appeared in a couple of top-notch video projects about games.

I’m featured in the latest video in the PBS web series “Off Book,” where I talk about games alongside game scholar Jesper Juul, game journalist Leigh Alexander, and Babycastles curator Sayed Salhuddin. Stay tuned to the end of the video for a great list of game recommendations.

When I was in the Netherlands speaking at the DiGRA conference, I was also shot by a crew from the Dutch website Submarine Channel and they also put together a great video based on that interview.

I’m not sure what it is in the air these days, but I’m happy that such great videos on games are coming out.

 

Filed under: Media Mentions, Video

Video from Games Culture Circle

Video from my appearance in Berlin is online. Games Culture Circle has posted a condensed version of the entire talk show experience here. It’s deliciously nerdy and wonderfully intellectual as only the Germans can pull off.

Don’t let the introductory bit in German fool you – within a minute, the event switches over to English. I’m the first guest up, and you can see me play Ninja with the audience, chat about the film PLAY I created with David Kaplan, and get extremely excited – perhaps a bit too excited – about game design.

The other guests include Ahmet Acar, a business consultant who makes his clients play games, and Iepe Rubingh, the artist who invented Chess Boxing. (I have posted about my Chess Boxing exploits here.)

I make appearances during the Charades montage in the middle, but you can also catch my future prognostications about games during the final Q&A around 23:20. Thanks, Games Culture Circle for excellent documentation of this truly enjoyable event.

Filed under: PLAY, Talks, Video

Videos from Art History of Games

In February, Nathalie Pozzi and I premiered our first collaboration, the physical game Sixteen Tons, at the Art History of Games conference in Atlanta. We also gave a couple talks. And now the conference has posted all of the videos online.

- You can watch me speak on the meaning of Sixteen Tons and Nathalie talk about performative architecture here.

- Our entertainingly contentious panel with Jason Rorhr and Brenda Braithwait is here.

Here is where you can find all of the videos from the conference. Shout out to John Sharp + SCAD and Ian Bogost + Georgia Tech for putting together an amazing event and commissioning our game.

Filed under: Sixteen Tons, Talks, Video

Social Issues and Games update

Subjectstoday.com posted this snippet from the “Games for Change” panel, teasing out a disagreement between Asi Burak and myself. Watch it here.

Filed under: Talks, Video

Talking about “games for change”

Just posted online: a talk I gave earlier this year at New School Univeristy about games for change, on a panel with Asi Burak (designer of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict game Peacemaker) and David Martz from Muzzy Lane software. You can see the entire video here, but if you’re short on time, you can skip ahead to my bit that starts at Chapter 7 – just click on the dashboard underneath the main video window. After that is Q&A with the audience.

My presentation focused on different design strategies that games can take relative to social issues. I use examples from my own work to look at games that simulate their subject matter, games that embody emerging forms of literacy through their play, and games that seek to subvert a larger social context through play.

Too often, a “game for change” means a game that didactically delivers a political message to its players, or at best, a game that seeks to simulate its subject matter in a straightforward way. Although changing society through games is not my main modus operandi, for designers that want to do so, there are other ways forward. I’d love to see more designers wrestling with the sociocultural context of their game, employing a rigorous theory of change by which they think their game will have a social impact, and also letting their game be a game by trusting play itself as an agent of change.

Watch the video for details.

Filed under: Talks, Video