Moving Forward - Games That Do Good - Extra Credits

[Music] [Music] whenever we see video games come up in the news or on TV it's almost universally in a negative light it's almost always in the wake of a tragedy and it's almost always to raise Hue and cry about how video games are murder simulators how they take decent young men and turn them into killing machines and this is false you know it I know it truth be told most of the people who say it on TV know it too but you know what I can't blame them because we haven't done anything as an industry to really change that view what I mean is to date almost all the efforts by the industry have been entirely reactionary someone cries murder simulators and we try to get some industry people on the talk shows saying how they're not and how there's no conclusive proof that video games increase violent tendencies and then we disappear again that's not enough we have to change the tenor of the discussion we have to talk about the good games can do rather than just defending them as not bad we need to give more than the anemic Hollow sounding sound bites that we always fall back to how games improve hand eye

coordination and how doctors who play video games make better surgeons we need to talk about the real good games do we need to move the dialogue to being about games as a scientific cultural and educational medium we need to talk about the real positive effect games are having on the world as a whole not just defend them when they come under Fire so how do we do this by pointing to the examples that already exist that sit in front of us even today the dialogue should be about fold it the game that trains people to solve protein folding Problems by making protein folding into a puzzle the game that's given thousands of people the skills to tackle these problems the game that clocks tens of thousands of man- hours working on real world challenges the game that got real people people like you and me to crack the structure of an HIV enzyme that had stumped scientists for 15 years the dialogue should be about games of science the dialogue should be about MMOs how year after year conference after conference we hear about how they Bridge cultural divides how time and again we hear about guilds raising money for someone far away who they've never met how we hear players talk about violence in the Middle East something that was remote and foreign to them sitting at home in the Suburban us suddenly becoming real present human

thing as it affected someone they played with thousands of miles away the dialogue should be about games as a cultural Medium as they have always been from the first Olympics down to the modern day the dialogue should be about kids doing math learning to read learning new languages for games James was just on a panel whose moderator had severe dyslexia and only games were powerful and engaging enough to get her to overcome her blocks and work to learn to read down in Brazil James saw students learning math through working out builds in am MOA time and again every time and in every country outside of the US that James goes and talks that someone comes up to him and says I learned English through playing games the dialogue should be about games as an educational tool so how do we get there as some of you might know James recently started a rocket Hub campaign to raise an advocacy fund for games I thought we should talk about it a bit here because we all think it's important and pretty core to what extra credits is all about so here is the basic plan first we need to open dialogue with policy makers in Washington last year James flew down to Lobby against soapa and pipa with the ECA and was shocked to learn just how rarely they hear from anybody in our industry or anyone representing game

consumers the few of them who had spoken to anyone had spoken to a handful of people from the entertainment software Association which has done good work in the past but it's not nearly enough there were plenty of misconceptions about games and a total ignorance of games outside of the running gunning stereotype in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy we need to start talking with lawmakers about the real good that games can do and help find better ways to honor the memory of so many young lives than to shift the blame to games cuz they're an easy target and move on once we've opened up the dialogue with lawmakers we need to start working with grants all of you have probably seen terrible entainment games or training simulators before and most of them were probably made on grant money for six times what they should have cost and this isn't some sort of scam nor is it due to bureaucracy or people trying to take advantage of the grant money that's out there honestly everyone out there giving grants for this sort of work wants to see those grants turn into incredible projects unfortunately right now there's no conduit no connection between all the people who are offering money to make games for good and most of the people who could actually execute on them we need more games that we can point to that clearly make a difference to the World At Large and to do this we

can't see all that funding go to waste we need to start talking to granters connecting them with people in the industry people who can vet the projects that are proposed to them and can help direct them to the right teams to build out what they're looking for we also need to connect the people working on the traditional game industry side with those funds so that when someone proposes a game that affects real change their company doesn't have to assume all of the risk this will allow people who are trained to entertain and to engage us to make the sort of games that can do even more once we have those two in place once we have the tools the games we need it'll be easy to cry foul every every time someone tries to say murder simulators and from there it's onto the talk shows the newsrooms the daytime TV armed with real and present good that games are doing because games matter if you want to help us with this effort if you want to change the dialogue around games from why they aren't evil to why they do good go to this link or click it down on the text below even if you can't contribute financially that's cool hey maybe you know somebody who gives out these sort of Grants or maybe you're connected to somebody holding public office who might be open to listening if so shoot us an email at this address any form of help is greatly appreciated if we take initiative on this now that

means the next generation won't have to keep fighting this exact same battle I'll see you next week [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music]