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Serious Games Summit: Henry Jenkins keynote
I'm here at the Serious Games Summit in Arlington, VA where the keyword of the keynote speech by MIT's Henry Jenkins was convergence. Not necessarily technological convergence -- that mythical, magical black box that will control your media and your life -- but a cultural convergence that allows a community to form a collective intelligence around a game, movie or TV show. The real appeal of media experiences today, Jenkins argued, is not necessarily the product itself, but the community that grows around it, the participatory culture that doesn't come in the box.Jenkins urged the serious games movement to keep this in mind when designing the educational and socially relevant games the conference is focused on. He challenged the diverse crowd of experts from the government, education, military, health and social change fields to create educational games that were less like a spelling bee (high on memorization, low on discussion and engagement) and more like Scrabble (high on experimentation, low on penalties for risk). Jenkins also echoed Will Wright's call for games that are interdisciplinary, that take on multiple agendas instead of just narrowly focusing on one subject.With the final part of his speech, Jenkins focused on specific projects trying to achieve these goals -- games like Revolution, a Neverwinter Nights mod that encourages students to role-play as a colonial patriot, and Labyrinth, an upcoming game that teaches math and logic skills on top of a search for a lost pet. Jenkins also acknowledged the challenges of getting these products out to market (some teachers refused to buy Revolution because of occult symbols in Neverwinter Nights, for instance), but seemed hopeful that companies could break through these barriers by joining together.
Henry Jenkins has a blog (and a new book)
Erudite academic and advocate for all things gaming, MIT Professor Henry Jenkins has started a blog titled "Confessions of an Aca/Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins." Now you can finally trash all those unofficial Henry Jenkins fansites from your RSS feed, cause this one's official. With only a couple gaming posts -- like this one on games as branded entertainment -- there's still plenty for the interested nerd to uncover and look forward to.But the blog isn't supposed to be all about games, it's about his new book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. We could try to condense what Prof. Jenkins is gonna be writing on his blog, but we'd only be doing a disservice to you, reader. So we'll just tease you into it: "Reduced to its most core elements, this book is about the relationship between three concepts - media convergence, participatory culture, and collective intelligence ...."
Wherefore art thou Lester Bangs of gaming?
Chuck Klosterman, a contributing writer for Esquire and regular columnist for SPIN Magazine, has written a fascinating and frustrating feature for the former inquiring as to the whereabouts of "The Lester Bangs of Video Games." Klosterman wants to know why there is no video game analog to film-critics like Pauline Kael or music-critics like Lester Bangs, and explains why he suspects there never will be. He asks Steven Johnson, whose Everything Bad is Good for You Klosterman calls "one of the only mainstream books that comes remotely close to the kind of gaming criticism I just described," about the dilemma. Johnson responds, "Video games generally have narratives and some kind of character development, but-almost without exception-these are the least interesting things about them. Gamers don't play because they're drawn into the story line; they play because there's something intoxicating about the mix of exploring an environment and solving problems. The stories are an afterthought." He also talks with MIT's Henry Jenkins who says, "Game designers are asking themselves questions about how a game should look and what it should do, but not about what the game is supposed to mean."What's refreshing about Klosterman's take is that he's willing to acknowledge the importance and potential of video games (unlike other critics who've issued similar dictums) while also noting and understanding the shortcomings. What's frustrating are the ommissions; some would be heirs to this throne do come to mind and -- curiously enough -- some even appear on Something Awful's list of the five worst game reviews. Do gamers want anything more than a shopping guide out of their reviews? Do game designers even mean anything with the games they make? So we're all on the same page, before you start commenting on the column, be sure to read it first![Update: for some rebuttals, check out Game Girl Advance, John Scalzi, and Clive Thompson.]
The possibilities of motion
Spirited away in the PC Gaming section of IGN is a rather well-written editorial of the past, present, and future of motion-sensing controllers. It examines how the PS3's and the Wii's new controllers might introduce a new visceral thrill into many tried-and-true genres, how it might attract new gamers, and so on. It's nothing terribly new, but it does have some interesting comments from the MIT professor/video game enthusiast Henry Jenkins, a revelation about how bouncing puppets might appear on the Wii, and a convenient collection of each company's stance on the future of input devices. Take a gander, if you're willing.[It's so bad.]
MIT prof. Henry Jenkins talks gaming, look at him go
GameSetWatch launches their new interview column with a bang, featuring a lengthy chat with Henry Jenkins, Director of the Comparative Media Studies program and Full Professor of Literature at MIT ... oh yeah, and an influential advocate of gaming. They cover divergent topics from his background in video games, to alternative reality games (ARGs), casual games, and that old staple, games as art, of which he says, "It doesn't matter whether there are games in the Museum of Modern Art. It does matter whether the best game designers are given enough room to push the limits of games as a medium ..."You'd all be wise to read the (admittedly long but proportionally edifying) interview and get a crash course in where gaming stands in the bespectacled eyes of one of gaming's greatest and most visible proponents ... all for a lot less than a degree from MIT.[Via Kotaku]
Eight myths about video games debunked
Henry Jenkins, director of comparative studies at MIT, debunks eight big myths about video games and their impact on society. If you're about to head into holiday get-togethers where others are wont to give you flak about your games hobby (or your games job), you should read up on these issues and to be prepared to set the record straight on games and violence, by force if necessary. The myths are: "The availability of video games has led to an epidemic of youth violence." "Scientific evidence links violent game play with youth aggression." "Children are the primary market for video games." "Almost no girls play computer games." "Because games are used to train soldiers to kill, they have the same impact on the kids who play them." "Video games are not a meaningful form of expression." "Video game play is socially isolating." "Video game play is desensitizing." [Via Torill Mortensen's excellent blog, thinking with my fingers] See also: Penny Arcade and Game Critics interviews with Henry Jenkins.
