YES
- At 060606, members of the game industry, cultural institutions, academics and students will discuss what the future of Serious Games holds. Both theoretical and practical, subjects of our debate include: What are the Stakes in Serious Games, what are the most important rules for developing serious games, and finally, How do people learn when they play.
- In the spirit of Serious Games, at 060606, participants are both audience members, game players and potential speakers. When participants register at our reception desk, they choose to join one of four teams, the Challengers, the Pretenders, the Whirlers or the High Rollers. They also submit a paper copy of your game autobiography.
- From there, participants and their teammates decide how to meet the challenges of the three conference levels, as listed in the schedule below. In Level One, they define their stakes in Serious Games. In Level Two, they share your best advice for serious game design. Finally, in Level Three, they demonstrate their game development know-how by creating a game for all conference participants.
- The name "Serious Games" implies that there are non-serious games, which is nonsense. All games are serious. As Huizinga argued, and Pestalozzi and Piaget before him, children learning to play games learn nothing less than the core principles of any organized society. They also discover that there are minds inside other people with intentional behaviors (Murray), that language is an abstraction of reality, that rules can be modified if there is consensus among all players, that some people cheat, that cheaters spoil the game, and that some things get boring over time and beg for innovation. (GN)
- The purpose of "Serious Games", especially those proposed by governments, is to modify behaviors, and puts games into the service of propaganda, unless the games can be freely modified by the players. (GN)
- Serious games are made out to be "good" games, games which help better society. This of course implies that the fine games we play today are "bad". Bad games are nothing but the mirror of a society which glamorizes bestiality. Don't like what you see in the mirror? Change your habits. Plus, do you have any idea what this place would look like without games like Grand Theft Auto, which just might absorb a good portion of a player's violent tendencies ? (GN)
- Serious games sustain unrealistic assumptions such as war is fun, you only have 5 lives, you can trust your neighbors, everybody speaks English, there is no second plane, and thereby condition us for inadequate responses to real-life situations. (GN)
- "Play may rise to heights of beauty and sublimity that leave seriousness far behind." (Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 8) That is, the aesthetic structuring of experience that designed play produces is not serious, it surpasses seriousness - it is sacred and sublime. Let us perhaps spend more time thinking about Sacred Games and Sublime Games, and less time thinking about Serious Games! (JMcG)
- Games are still not attracting a balance of genders. It is considered good if a game attracts a 15% female audience. (Neil Young, Electronic Arts) Second Life attracts 35% which is considered excellent. (Philip Rosedale, Linden Labs) What will it take to make games & developers better tuned to a female audience? I'm guessing that the future of new media will help when more "serious games" no longer require sitting in front of a computer terminal or kiosk. (LH)
- The history of chess amply reflects the interchange of learned behaviors between game and government.
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