(from left) Laird Malamed, Laurel Felt, and George Rose grin post-panel discussion on the business of impact games
On Tuesday, February 28, 2012, I moderated a discussion with Activision executives Laird Malamed and George Rose that considered impact games in terms of business models and market prognostications (as opposed to pedagogy, assessment, design, etc). Co-hosted by USC Impact Games (a cross-campus group that I co-chair) and the USC Marshall Society & Business Lab, this event introduced undergraduate business majors to the field, as well as united like-minded scholars university-wide.
While the definition (as well as the terminology — impact game vs. serious game) is contested, one might characterize an impact game as a game that has been designed for a purpose beyond pure entertainment. While the game must entertain in order to effectively engage users’ attention, it aims to impact users’ knowledge, attitudes, and/or practices. Impact games have taught players about international conflicts (as in USC Impact Games co-chair Susana Ruiz’s Darfur is Dying), emotional regulation strategies (as in GameDesk‘s Dojo, the focus of my dissertation), and the pathways to and protocols for college access (as in USC Collegeology‘s Application Crunch and Mission: Admission). They have provided contexts for exercising (as in the Nintendo Wii and the Xbox Kinect), rehabilitating (as in the work of Marientina Gotsis with the USC Creative Media & Behavioral Health Center), accessing tailored health plans (as in My Fitness Coach 2), and building community (as in USC Annenberg Innovation Lab‘s ParTour).
A FEW TAKEAWAYS According to Laird:
Funding — Sponsorship seems a more reliable source of funding than short-term and/or volatile grants. Find companies that support your goals, that want to support/celebrate these goals — principally for-profit businesses that would benefit from being associated with the project. If the outcome is social awareness/understanding, that’s a tougher sell…
Sustainability — Can’t think of a game in absence of a sustainability model, even going into the concept of it, even outlining/coming up with a design. It’s okay to say, in the case of an impact game, there is no business model for this, but what’s not okay is to add it in at the end (similar argument goes for assessment). When you’re evaluating design and deciding what to cut, you don’t cut the things that you’re selling/marketing/getting sponsored for. Another lens to look through that should be done in an iterative fashion. Take multiple passes to consider technology, art, and sustainability factors. No one lens is the right blanket way to do it.
Horizon — Are you making one per year or one every few years? Does it have to survive more than three years (that’s a long time for an interactive project to survive, it will look dated)? It’s more like you’re creating an event that will be online for a 1000 days vs. creating an enduring product. iPhone games being a good example to look at in terms of life-span synced with business plan and goals.)
According to George:
Product development and marketing — You’re creating a product that does something novel, or does better or more efficiently a legacy product. You must overcome built-in resistance from the idea that games and screentime are frivolous and unnecessary, reading books onscreen isn’t real reading, etc. In-fighting among entrenched, interested entities.
Future directions — Impact games are used robustly in Europe to inform citizens about corporate social responsibility. Stateside, we may see growth in this sector as well as in the areas of exergames and rehabilitation, among others.
—–
Here is our PR blurb, a better-than-nothing video of the event, our agenda, and a few pix snapped during the discussion and immediately afterwards:
PUBLICITY The Business of Impact Games: A moderated discussion with gaming executives
From Darfur is Dying to Sim City, the field of “impact” or “serious” games is on the rise. Panelists will discuss what it takes to build up a market for these games and offer strategies for developing and selling commercial products. They will also explore these games’ tremendous potential for inspiring global change and bringing awareness to various issues, from education to public health.
Panelists: Laird Malamed, Adjunct Faculty, USC School of Cinematic Arts and President, Creative Learning Technologies; George Rose, former Chief Legal Officer and Chief Public Policy Officer and current Senior Consultant to Chief Executive Officer of Activision Blizzard
Moderator: Laurel Felt, Doctoral Candidate at USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism
AGENDA
1. Introductions: (5:05-5:10 pm)
Tell me more about your background and experience. Chronologically, please share your titles, affiliations, and years spent in each position.
2. Definitions: (5:10-5:20 pm)
What are “serious” or “impact” games? Why the vernacular distinction? What are the potential problems as well as potential benefits of each term? Considering the interdisciplinary nature of this field, how should we move forward regarding a shared (if not, common) language? Issues of “perception” (i.e. games, in the general public’s mind, are not to be taken seriously).
3. Personal Connections: (5:20-5:35 pm)
Why do YOU care about serious or impact games? What brought you from a more purely commercial origin to working in this philanthropically-influenced domain? Was there a key moment or insight, a seminal piece of literature or game, that changed your way of thinking and/or inspired a new agenda? Why should the commercial game industry take this field seriously? How is productive collaboration fostered in a space typically (and perhaps, necessarily) inhabited by multiple cultures?
4. Business Considerations: (5:35-5:50 pm)
Let’s talk about practical strategies for developing, disseminating and selling these products/experiences commercially. How do we assemble productive diverse teams, monetize ethically and significantly, and get these games out there? How can teams and businesses plan in a sustainable way?
How can academic game programs and business programs educate students to co-experiment and innovate around new business models for projects/services that seek to make a profit as well as advance social justice and education? For example, past one grant-funded project, how can a studio/developer continue to create high-quality products and keep a roof over her head while competing (or, at least, existing in parallel with) with richly funded commercial entities?
5. Personal Insights/Advice/Lessons Learned + Future Forecasting: (5:50-6 pm)
What have you discovered as a result of your experience? What would you advise our audience members in terms of what TO do and what NOT to do? Five, 10, and 20 years down the pike: What do you see in terms of this field? Paint that picture (in terms of the culture, the technology, and the creative aspects).
6. Q&A: (6-6:20)
Let’s hear what the people have to say!
Marshall's Vertical Lead for Social Impact Careers Nicole Butler chats with USC Impact Games co-chairs Kristy Norindr and Susana Ruiz
The Digital Media and Learning Conference is an annual event supported by the MacArthur Foundation and organized by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub located at the UC Humanities Research Institute, University of California, Irvine. The conference is meant to be an inclusive, international and annual gathering of scholars and practitioners in the field, focused on fostering interdisciplinary and participatory dialog and linking theory, empirical study, policy, and practice.
Themed “Beyond Educational Technology: Learning Innovations in a Connected World,” DML 2012 focused on the following categories:
Making, Tinkering and Remixing // MTR: To become full and active participants in 21st century society, young
people must learn to design, create, and invent with new technologies, not simply interact with them. What
are the pathways for becoming a maker and not just a user in a world of Connected Learning? What social and
technical infrastructures provide the best support for young people as they learn to tinker with materials, remix
one another’s work, and iteratively refine their creations?
The goal of this track is to explore the tensions between the design of emerging platforms and the practices that
unfold on them, with specific attention given to the policy challenges that emerge. How does the technology
respond practice and how do users repurpose technology? Who gets to set the community norms and how are
these norms negotiated? How are values— like privacy, safety, and transparency—embedded in the technology
and how does this shape socio-technical practices? What happens when conflicts emerge between the users and
the creators? How does the tension between technical design and personal practices configure these spaces?
Re-imagining Media for Learning // RML: What does it mean to think of media and games in the service of
diverse educational goals and within a broad ecology of learning? In particular, how can we balance the needs
of multi-stakeholder alliances against the challenges of designing engaging, playful and truly innovative media
experiences? Especially those that go beyond implementations of technologies and platforms to create real
communities of playful learning and rich opportunities for individual discovery and growth.
Democratizing Learning Innovation // DLI: Looking to the groundswell for massively collaborative innovation
and change, what does it take to pull from a participatory and networked ecology to push innovation from the
bottom up and from the outside in versus top down and inside out?
Innovations for Public Education // IPE: Too often cutting edge technology innovations serve the interests
of the already privileged “creative class.” What can we do to ensure that the most innovative forms of
learning are accessible to all educators and young people relying on public education infrastructures?
How can digital innovation directly impact disparities in achievement of students based on race and class?
I had the privilege of presenting on two panels, both in the Innovations for Public Education division. Kicking off the first session of Day 1, we colleagues (Henry Jenkins, Erin Reilly, Laurel Felt, Kirsten Carthew, Vanessa Vartabedian, Akifa Khan, Isabel Morales, Greta Enszer) from the PLAY! (Participatory Learning And You!) initiative offered a hands-on workshop entitled “Challenge-based Learning and the PLAYground: What is challenge-based learning and how can we use an online platform to explore it?” At least 100 individuals crammed into our wee conference room and spilled into the hallway…
This hands-on workshop will explore challenge-based learning opportunities using Project New Media Literacies’/PLAY!’s PLAYground on-line platform. Teachers, students and researchers will facilitate an exploration of challenges
created by our pilot program and demonstrate opportunities for workshop participants to create action-oriented curriculum for student participation/engagement in both formal (classroom) and informal learning environments.
In 2009, the New Media Consortium collaborated with Apple to define a new pedagogical framework called
challenge-based learning. This combines project-based learning, problem-based learning and the importance of taking action in solving real-world problems to share with the world. With information and sharing with others at the tips of our fingers, challenges encourage participants to search, synthesize, collaboratively remix and disseminate information central to questions that are open-ended and serve as a framework for student-centered learning and inquiry on specific topics that they are passionate about (Johnson, Smith, Smythe, & Varon, 2009).
The PLAYground is an online platform for the curation, creation and circulation of user-generated challenges, where the majority of participants are teachers and students from various disciplines and ages. It is designed to cultivate and promote challenge-based learning experiences. In large and small groups, participants are able to: design and participate in learning-rich activities; identify these activities’ potential contributions to teaching and learning; reflect upon their own pedagogical practices; and discover intersections and practical take-aways.
The innovation of the PLAYground is embedded in both its content and design as a technological tool that serves teachers and students within the learning eco-system. The platform is free, user friendly, and has been piloted with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) public school teachers and students from a range of disciplines (e.g., special needs, math and sciences, health, literacy, social studies, etc). Every teacher who participated in the pilot phase testing of the PLAYground derived benefit, regardless of classroom access to technology. Those who lacked digital tools utilized the challenge content within the PLAYground to create dynamic lessons off-line using the 21st century skill sets implicit to challenge-based learning.
WORKSHOP OUTLINE
1) Introduction to Challenge-Based Learning in the context of PLAY!: PLAY! framework; Working Definition of “Challenge-based learning” – What key nuances distinguish it from other types of learning?; Introduction to the PLAYground
2) Playful polling — How recently and often have you used play as a vehicle for learning? How, if at all, does co-learning appear in your practice?
3) Challenge Creation — Each group, divided by the foci of the conference + key interest areas, creates a paper prototype of a challenge
4) Share out — Group discussion/presentation of the challenges: How can this be used in the classroom and beyond?
Here is our presentation. Participants’ brilliant and unique creations illustrated the value (even the imperativeness) of flexibility in education. When we provide open-ended means for accessing learning goals, as well as support learners with tools for pursuing passions, the richness of their products is inestimable.
After lunch, I joined USC colleagues (Zoe Corwin, Elizabeth Swensen, Sean Bouchard, Jenna Sablan,
Tracy Fullerton, Vanessa Vartabedian, Laurel Felt, Vanessa Monterosa) to present “Divide and Conquer: Examining and Confronting the Digital Divide.”
The “digital divide” creates an additional layer of challenge for students already facing inadequate services in their schools. But what does the digital divide look like? And what strategies are being employed to provide greater access to meaningful technologies?
The intent of this panel is to bolster understandings of how students from low-income backgrounds use technology and explore what digital and game innovations are being developed for under-served students. Panelists hail from education, communications, interactive media and sociology programs and all are currently working with game and social media projects designed to provide high quality digital resources to low-income communities. The panelists will: 1) share quantitative and qualitative research findings that describe the digital divide and 2) discuss how researchers and game designers are addressing the digital divide through innovative programs. A moderator will facilitate a questions and answer segment with the aim of stimulating discussion among audience and panelists about what we know about the digital divide and how we are confronting it.
1: Digital snapshot of urban high school students
This paper describes digital profiles of students at three urban Los Angeles area schools. Data derive from focus groups, questionnaires, and observations. Study findings outline what types of technology students use at school and at home, ease and speed of Internet access, social networking behaviors, mobile device usage, influence of technology on interactions with peers and family members, and students’ willingness and ability to learn about college through technology.
2: Serious problem, seriously fun game
Through the Collegeology Games project, researchers and game designers from the University of Southern California have utilized new media forms, such as digital and tabletop games, to boost college aspirations and promote college-going strategies for underserved students. The focus of the presentation will be on identifying potential aspects of a problem space, and adapting educational games for different platforms and audiences.
3: After-school digital literacy, Part 1: Explore Locally, Excel Digitally
How one negotiates digital tools and norms impacts citizenship on and offline. USC Annenberg’s Participatory Learning And You! (PLAY!) initiative’s after-school program “Explore Locally, Excel Digitally” (ELED) used hardware, software, and team-building activities to investigate ethics, mapping, and their intersections. Students examined their own communities and the nature of their participation within these networks, looking at ELED, their friendship circles, schools, and neighborhood. Ethnographic fieldnotes, video footage, student-generated multimedia content, and survey measures demonstrated that this pedagogical framework supported a participatory learning culture and facilitated students’ development of self- and collective efficacy.
4: After-school digital literacy, Part 2: Laughter for a Change
Play On! Workshops are a series of after-school programs facilitated by USC Annenberg’s PLAY! initiative, operated out of RFK-LA’s MediaLab at the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools. Among these workshops, improvisational theater-focused Laughter for a Change provided its high school-aged participants with opportunities to develop performance skills, boost self-confidence, practice collaboration, and co-learn in a trusting, multi-aged community of practice.
While I had prepared an elaborate PowerPoint presentation, I opted to breeze past most of it in favor of practicing what I preached. Climbing atop a chair, I exhorted the (post-lunch lethargic) audience to find a partner and risk public silliness. Each pair’s “A” individual (who self-identified by raising the roof while whooping “Whoo whoo!”) kicked off a mirror exercise, slowly moving arms, legs, torso, and face while his/her “B” mate (who self-identified by pressing it down while grunting “Whoa whoa!”) moved in synchrony. I called out “B!” and the “B” individual took the lead while “A” followed. They passed control back and forth according to my command, striving for eye contact (an intimate, uncomfortable, and valuable connection) and monitoring action.
Reflecting on the exercise, participants commented on their varying levels of engagement and comfort and identified the utility of play/games as a context for learning and community-building. Dr. Sarah Vaala, a fellow member of the International Communication Association (ICA)’s Children, Adolescents, and Media division and Research Fellow at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, included my presentation in her recap of Day One at DML:
“…In one panel, Laurel Felt of USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism described how LA high school students boosted their self-confidence and communication skills through an afterschool improv class. “Laughter for a cause” [sic], she claimed, gave kids the space they needed to look silly, goof around, fail, and have fun. The students essentially were given permission to play, free of peer pressure, societal expectations, and academic assessment, all while building trust with each other and co-learning the basics of improv comedy” (Vaala, 2012, para 7).
Throughout the conference, in an uncharacteristic move, I Tweeted! It seemed the thing to do — when in Rome and all that — and this backchannel provided access to super note-taking and rich interrogation, annotation, and reflection.
In DML’s aftermath, several participants have penned sense-making essays, Mimi Ito‘s of particular note. Action and continued community-building must follow. With USC Impact Games colleagues Zoe Corwin and Tracy Fullerton, I will gather USC’S DML attendees and interested/like-minded individuals to debrief, identify, and innovate. Specifically, we will: reflect on DML 2012; list out our projects to increase transparency and synergy across the university; support the development of conversations and working groups; and take over the world!
Wednesday, March 21, 2-3 pm, Game Innovation Lab (GIL), located on the second floor at Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC), 3131 S. Figueroa
USC’s DML attendees (in no particular order): Bill Tierney (Education)
Sean Bouchard (Cinema)
Elizabeth Swensen (Cinema)
Jeff Watson (Cinema)
Henry Jenkins (Communication, Journalism, Cinema, Education)
Ben Stokes (Communication)
Alex Leavitt (Communication)
John Seely Brown (at-large)
Brendesha Tynes (Education)
John Pascarella (Education)
Otto Khera (Education)
Erin Reilly (Communication)
Vanessa Vartabedian (Communication)
Jenna Sablan (Education)
Vanessa Monterosa (Education)
Melissa Brough (Communication)
Meryl Alper (Communication)
George Villanueva (Communication)
Ronan Hallowell (Education)
Akifa Khan (Communication)
Kirsten Carthew (Communication)
Francois Bar (Communication)
Gabriel Peters-Lazaro (Cinema)
Tracy Fullerton (Cinema)
Zoe Corwin (Education)
Laurel Felt (Communication)
An old activist adage encourages us to “think globally, act locally.” Riffing on this, my colleagues and I developed an after-school program called “explore locally, excel digitally.” I’d like to think that our USC-based, digital media & learning-oriented coalition combines both complementary values. With the goal of impacting the wider world on- and off-line, we disparate denizens of a single institution will cross the quad for face-to-face encounters, asynchronous cyber conversations, and collective intelligence-enriched innovation. The question is, If we build it, will they come?
