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.
"If you're going to read this, don't bother." -Chuck Palahniuk