TEDtalk Tuesday: Making Meaning with Games

This talk is given by Brenda Brathwaite, a woman who has been a game designer since she was fifteen.


Doesn't that just make you jealous?  I totally am.
She doesn't design video games anymore, but she was a lead designer at Atari from 2001-03.


Right now, though, her passion lies in making board (bored?) games for social change.  She's even got a blog about it.
This talk is specifically about why she began making these types of games: her 7 yr-old half-black daughter came home after learning about the Middle Passage in school, and shrugged it off as if it were "some black people going on a cruise".


Brenda couldn't stand her daughter's apathy, so she made a game to relate her daughter to the events of the Middle Passage.  And by the time they were done playing, everyone was in tears.
Her daughter related to the people in the game, and superimposed her own experiences and relationships onto those characters to make meaning from the game.  And Brenda was the one who fostered that meaning.


For a long time, I've been fascinated at using games for education.  I love this public school in New York that has launched a curriculum based on video games.  They're called Quest 2 Learn, and their teaching model is off the basis that their kids can learn critical thinking, reading, writing, creativity--all in a fun way.

They even host extracurricular programs and summer camps, like Mobile Quest for Fifth graders, to encourage additional learning.


I wasn't one of the students that these sorts of programs typically cater to.  I was your typical, hard-working girl who wanted to impress her teachers. I'm 4 weeks from graduating and I'm dreading it because I love school so much.  These video game curriculums aren't geared towards people like me.

That is a translation I did for one of my Tech writing classes that advocates for gaming in schools.  I did all the research, and pulled out all the facts.  Then I put that information into a nice, short flyer for parents who were interested.

The games at Q2L are primarily focused toward those "trouble" children that often get bored during class.  I can't say I haven't gotten bored, either because they were too smart for that level, or because they just didn't get it (math was that subject, for me), but video games have the ability to change that.


Maybe I'd be better at math if I had played more math games when I was little. (We had Math Blaster and Reading Blaster when I was a kid.  I was better at Reading Blaster because it had a cooler story.

My brother was better at Math Blaster because he got to shoot guns every time he got a problem correct.)  And because I was better at math, maybe I could have continued taking engineering courses.  Maybe I could have made "being in the shop" a career, rather than just an occasional hobby.

I was always the girl, of course.  She had purple hair.  =)

Video games increase the "interest factor" of a specific subject.  If I get to play a game while I'm learning sentence syntax, I'm liable to play longer and practice more because it's fun.  Math Blaster is probably one of the only reasons why I was good at math when I was younger (there wasn't a Math Blaster for Algebra, once I got to that level, unfortunately).


My point, with all of this rambling, is that video games play a huge role in society, and right now, they reflect on how we think.  Here's a quote from one of my friends about The Elder Scroll games by Bethesda (Oblivion, Morrowind, Skyrim).

P.P.S. Consider this: You have the choice of what race you play as. Elves, obviously a different branch of the human tree (larger eyes and cranium). The Kajiit are freaking cat people. You have lizard folk also, crossing the gap of mammalian and reptilian as merely racial characteristics. Then you have the Red Guard. What exactly is Bethesda saying here? >_<

Game designers think when they create. Usually. You just have to figure out what the game is trying to teach you...or what they're trying to say about society.
Designers already know the power of games, and they have to think about the impact they have on us, and weigh that impact against a whole slew of societal pressures.


Brenda Brathwaite is one of those designers who knows the power of games.  She doesn't work for Q2L, but I bet they'd sure be willing to hire her.


"Games change how we see topics, our perceptions about those people and topics and we change, as people, through games because we're involved and we're playing and learning as we do so."


So how can we design games into tricking people into learning?  (because personally, I'm still a fan of my mindless first-person shooters) =)