Category Archives: games for change

Sup Ladies

The feature on female protagonists I wrote for OXM is now online, featuring thoughts from Hideki Kamiya, Valve’s Erik Wolpaw, Crystal Dynamics’ Darrell Gallagher and BioWare’s Mac Walters. In it, I aimed to take the standard wisdom about how to make good female characters from “cover their boobs and make them admirable” to “let female protagonists be people above all.” Okay, so it’s a bit more complex than that, but the industry folk I spoke to for the piece had some pretty interesting thoughts, and I’d be psyched for you to give it a read.

Also online is video of the Jesse Schell talk I told you about recently — have a look if you get a sec. Finally, I also recently published an analysis on the state of games for social good, with a list of the Games For Change Festival winning games.

Insular Illumination


Horrible insomnia last night; zero sleep. 9:00 AM this morning found me Netflix-ing The Secret of Kells, a very lovely animated film which I hoped would soothing enough to assuage that awful eye-aching, chest-knit agony that sets in when you’ve been without rest too long and can’t find any in the face of exhaustion.

It was! Really enjoyed it. The star is the animation and the visual technique, but the music was lovely too, and I was impressed that despite the fact it’s a story of a religious book, it avoided being messagey. It was so pretty I didn’t mind it being plot-light; would love to see the same animators do another film with more story substance, as the storytelling was mature and nuanced. I recommend it!
The main theme of the film is the idea that a beautiful book has the power to bring peace. In happy synchronicity, Jesse Schell’s fantastic closing keynote of the 2011 Games For Change event today also focused on the idea that communications media — especially games — have enormous power to affect behavior and bring peace and world change. It was a very moving talk; you can check out my writeup on Gamasutra right now, although I advise you to keep an eye on the Games For Change video library; I’m hoping they put video of Schell’s talk online so that you can watch it yourself.
Also new: longstanding and much-beloved online zine Insert Credit has relaunched! I read Insert Credit before I was old enough to drink, and that’s where I first heard of a dude named Brandon Sheffield, never knowing at the time that he’d be a coworker of mine nearly a decade later. It’s with great pleasure I accepted his invitation to me to contribute here and there from time to time.
For starters I join all the staff in contributing this piece as part of a huge manifesto-of-sorts on the state of games journalism. It’s not a topic I actually like talking about too much — don’t talk about making it better, just do it, is sorta how I roll — but in this case, I felt I had some new thoughts to contribute, since it’s been a while since I addressed it.
Finally, allow me to take a pause on all this positivity to direct your attention to my latest Thought Catalog piece, where I had a little time to try to talk “sense” into those dudes who are always complaining that girls don’t like them because they are “too nice.” LOGICAL FALLACY.

Games For Good

The annual Games For Change event is going on here in New York City, an event fairly dear to my heart (and not just because coverage of the event in 2007 was the very first feature I ever did for Gamasutra). The field of applying gaming and game design concepts to learning and activism is still shaping up, as more and more organizations notice the enormous economic and social breadth of the medium. This is exciting to me, because it means people will be exploring the power of interactive entertainment and the goodness of play for all kinds of things besides just the fun of it.

This year, the keynote speaker was Vice President Al Gore, who as you know is passionate in his career about global causes, particularly climate change. For such a prominent figure so active in philanthropy to come to New York City to tell nonprofits and game developers hoping to partner in the change games arena that he believes in this power for games was really significant, I think. Check out my keynote coverage at Gamasutra, and there’ll be more from the event in the coming days.
On a related note, I was honored to be once again invited to judge the games entered in this year’s Life.Love game challenge, hosted annually by Jennifer Ann’s Group, which works to educate young people on the dangers of teen dating violence and how to protect themselves and their friends. This year’s games were of an impressive quality — check out the winners! That Jennifer Ann’s Group uses game design to reach out to its target demographic is another example of how positive our medium can be. Please consider supporting Jennifer Ann’s Group by sharing its resources with people you know or in any way you can.
Yes, games are very positive. Meanwhile, Infamous 2 lets me throw a truck at a helicopter and electrocute those annoying street performers that drum on pails and I love it. More on that soon. Meanwhile, check out the latest GamerDork podcast, where I once again join Leon, Neil and their fabulous accents to shoot the breeze on E3 and the games we’ve been loving.