Killjoys for Change

[Valin]

Weekly Standard:

Jonathan V. Last
June 14, 2010

You might not think of Sandra Day O’Connor as a videogame enthusiast, but there she was in New York last month, giving the keynote speech at a videogame design conference. Just so you don’t get the wrong idea about the former justice, this wasn’t your normal group of game designers—the anarcho-nihilist techheads who dream up murderous shoot-’em-ups like Doom and Grand Theft Auto and Resident Evil. This was a group of gaming do-gooders who believe that videogames can make the world a better place by making people better.

The conference was hosted by an outfit called Games for Change (G4C), which gathered together an usual assortment of tech futurists, academics, media evangelists, and government hipsters, all of whom want to spur the creation of ennobling videogames.

People have been trying to make videogames good for you since the Apple IIe appeared in the early 1980s. Back then games such as “Lemonade Stand” and “Oregon Trail” tried to teach rudimentary lessons about math and planning. “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” taught geography and some small-bore history. But the Games for Changers are interested in moral instruction. As their website helpfully explains, the Games for Change Annual Festival “brings together leading nonprofit organizations, experts, and game developers to explore the increasing real-world impact of digital games as an agent for social change.”

The leaders and experts were the usual suspects. Naturally, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation was there, both as a sponsor and a participant. The foundation has been the biggest dupe in the digital world since 2007, when it was suckered into giving $550,000 to sponsor conferences inside the virtual world “Second Life.” The digitally omnipresent NYU media professor Clay Shirky was there too. His contribution was to explain that the Internet is enlarging both “the radius and half-life of generosity.”

Shirky is one of those technophiliacs who surf from conference to conference on a wave of babble. In a recent interview with Wired, he explained the human animal thus: “Behavior is motivation filtered through opportunity.” Shirky’s Big Idea is that the Internet is replacing television as the activity on which modern man wastes his free time. And that, as Wikipedia, YouTube, and LoLCats demonstrate, the Internet is better for us than television. Or at least, that’s his Big Idea this week. A year ago his Big Idea was that the Twitter Revolution in Iran was “the big one”—a seachange in which social media were altering the course of real-world events.

Next to people like Shirky, the representatives from the public sector looked serious-minded and judicious. The White House’s chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra, told attendees that the Obama administration was trying to move citizens away from thinking “there’s a form for that” and toward thinking “there’s an app for that.” Chopra was joined by Kumar Garg, of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, who said that the president’s team is very interested in videogames. Garg said that his office is exploring ideas about how the White House could “empower” the “gaming community.” Sara DeWitt was there from PBSKids.org—Public Broadcasting’s online destination for parents who want the computer, instead of the television, to babysit their children. DeWitt said that the videogames are her site’s biggest draw and that these games help children “learn how to interact socially online.” In one of the breakout panel discussions it was suggested that the government should create a National Public Games corporation in the mold of National Public Radio.

There were “Twambassadors” roaming the conference and sharing their real-time observations about the affair with other attendees on a G4C Twitter list.


Leaving the farcical elements aside, G4C is serious about making socially instructive videogames. Which is what drew Justice O’Connor to the conference. Even though she’s retired from the Supreme Court, she’s still an agent for social change. Upon returning to private life, O’Connor discovered—who knew?—that American children know very little about the civic institutions. In 2008 she partnered with Georgetown University to create iCivics, a website full of videogames to teach people about government.

Continue

[clearvision]

"in one of the breakout panel discussions it was suggested that the government should create a National Public Games corporation in the mold of National Public Radio."

 

or maybe is more appropriate.

[Valin]

"in one of the breakout panel discussions it was suggested that the government should create a National Public Games corporation in the mold of National Public Radio."

 

or maybe is more appropriate.

 

 

I do wonder what Sam Adams would say and do if he were around today.

[kevindavis]

"in one of the breakout panel discussions it was suggested that the government should create a National Public Games corporation in the mold of National Public Radio."

 

or maybe is more appropriate.

 

Is this for real?????

[Sanguine]

I was in Boston last week, and passed Sam Adams grave. I'm pretty sure I saw some rotary action going on there.