The 2017 Education Soapbox

Woo! Hello, hello. Welcome and I hope you're having an awesome, awesome GDC. I am Karen Schrier. I am the director of games and emerging media at Marist College and assistant professor there as well and I am here to talk about presenting. Uh so as we know, big big news flash, game students need a ton of skills. I mean math, skills, so many things. In the past we could get away with just teaching them coding. Maybe you could just teach them some art. In the way, way past, we could probably get away with just having passion for games. But now we got to teach them all this. There's a lot. There's a lot of things there and in a way it's kind of like our students have to be unicorns to be able to get a job and to be able to say, "Hey, I'm a successful student."

And if you look at the top must-have skills, uh leadership, teamwork, strong communication skills are leading the way. Uh So communication, we need our students to actually be able to talk to each other, right? Uh we've got to teach them these game design specific skills and uh oddly though, what might be most important is that they could present and talk and speak to each other and be able to articulate clear ideas and um arguments and methods and data. And not only that, but to be able to listen to each other and empathize with each other. And in in fact, this is kind of what design is, really. I mean, deep down it's about communicating really well to each other. Um yet here we are leaving communication in the corner, right? We're not making it perhaps as much of a priority as it should be.

So, today I am asking you, please, please, please, please, please, don't leave communication in the corner anymore. Make it your top priority. So, I'm going to give you my top 10 tips for teaching public presentation to game students, which uh sometimes seems like an oxymoron, but I'm here to say it actually should be one of your top priorities for teaching game students. Number one, do it early and often, okay? From day one, even before day one, make presentation a key component of your classes. This means maybe show and tell of games. It could mean presenting for 1 minute on the design process. It doesn't have to be a big presentation. It doesn't even have to be the final presentation. It could be every single day they come in your class, they have to stand up, even if it's just at their desk, and talk about what they did in the last since last class. Get them used to it. Get them comfortable with it. Create a culture of presenting.

This is hard to achieve, but it comes down to valuing presentation. I mean, making that one of the number one skills to be able to to succeed in your program. It could mean that a large proportion of their grade is even presentation skills, not just design skills. Um have a formal workshop. Bring in some trainers, people who are experts in presentation. Maybe you're not the expert, that's okay. Have someone come in, give training and tips on how to make a good presentation, how to construct a good argument, how to tell a story really well, and then have your students practice the rest of the semester. Do lots and lots of low-stakes exercises. Not everything has to be graded, okay? You could just give feedback, and um have lots of ungraded assignments, okay? Get students used to getting feedback, getting used to being critiqued, critique each other, lots of peer critique. It also means

you're giving detailed instruction not just on game design and development, but on the presentation skills, right? How to build speeches for different audiences, how to deal with different styles, formats, language use. Have students practice in a lot of different places, okay? Have them at their desk, have them stand up in front of the class, have them do presentations online via Skype, okay? Have them do it in a game, Second Life. Make presentations a normal part of the everyday, okay? Practice. Present beyond the classroom, have them stand in front of clients, have them go and present at a conference. Okay? Create a conference at your university where they can present in a public forum. Have them come to GDC and present, okay? Have them at a game jam, present at the end of the game jam or a hackathon, their ideas, their works in progress. So,

really important, make sure your students are comfortable, okay? Make sure they're supported, make sure they understand that that presenting matters, but that they also matter and their comfort matters, okay? Sometimes we think in our head that game students are not going to be very good at presenting, so let's just not push them in that way, but I have found that except for maybe one or two students, most students really want this practice and they need this practice to succeed in their futures. But push boundaries, get them out of their comfort zones, too, okay? Give them credit for failing, making mistakes, okay? Get them to do things that are out of their normal everyday, take risks, go on job interviews, go go to GDC, go to places that maybe take them outside of their normal, and you know, make them gain their confidence. Because if they gain their confidence, that's going to influence every aspect of their work, their design

work, and their their who they are as people, okay? Iterate, iterate, iterate. Just as you would with a game design, the development process, do the same thing with presentations, make them practice, practice again, and revise and revise. Have them video tape themselves, watch it, and practice and revise it. Have them peer do peer critique, have them practice using different language, have them put on silly costumes, be use crazy props, use crazy music, anything that gets them to feel comfortable and want to get up there and keep trying and learning and experimenting. Be transparent with how you do evaluate them. When you are giving them grades, be really clear about how you're grading them, what what matters to you. Give them the rubrics up in front, you know, beforehand. Have them see the feedback forms that they're going to be use using.

Focus on logic and story, okay? So, they need to be able to do presentations that are supported by evidence and data, but also tell a good story, right? You want them to be able to connect with their audience, to be able to care about their subject, to talk through their wins and their losses, their successes and their challenges, and to make people remember through story. Okay? And oh, wait, I said top 10, but I have an 11th. There I am making a mistake. Show them that you make mistakes, okay? It's okay to make mistakes. Be the model of someone who can make mistakes and can grow from it, okay? And number 11 is even though you may have some standards and some rubrics and some requirements, you want to value different styles and different perspectives, okay? There's obviously certain things that you want to hit, like good eye contact,

telling stories, making people care, connecting with the audience, clear, articulate ideas, you know, positive attitude and enthusiasm. Yes, you want that, right? But you also want to value different ways of presenting and also be accepting and open because that's going to build trust with your students and that's going to make them more comfortable and confident to be able to present in front of you. Ultimately, it's about building relationships, not only with your audience, but also also with your students. Having a culture of presenting is going to have your students feel more part of your program, right? They're going to It's going to serve them on their own teams. It's going to serve them at college and beyond college. Want to hear more? I hope so. Email me for rubrics, exercises, tools, anything to get your students excited and

enthusiastic about presentation. I hope that you will. Thanks. Glad you put cat memes in because I was scared that I didn't have any, so um Hi there. My name is Christopher Totten. I teach here. I'm an indie game developer and a game community advocate. I've published books about game making, including an architectural approach to level design, and the recently released edited volume level design processes and experiences. And I'm one of the lead organizers of the Smithsonian American Art Museum Arcade. But today, I'm here to ask, has this ever happened to you? A colleague comes to you offering a collaboration, but really they mean you'll be illustrating their research

article or report. Or has a game art student skilled with software ever asked you to look at their work only for you to find an abject horror that could have been prevented if only they'd taken an intro drawing class, then you may be a victim of game academia's art problem problem problem. So, what do I mean by game academia has an art problem? I'm going to define it as the way our field de-emphasizes game making disciplines descended from the arts in favor of others. Now, to be clear, I'm not talking about games that use the affordances of contemporary art to design interactivity. But rather acknowledging the lineage between game asset creation specialties and the historic fields they're descended from. So, what are some of these disciplines? Looking through the keywords used in the DiGRA online library shows the dominance

of serious games, learning, and game interactivity design as research topics. Likewise, there are large numbers of keywords derived from terms in the social sciences, cognitive development, and behavior studies. What you don't see are the same number of topics in areas like spatial design in games, sound design, visual arts, and even music. So, the first part of our problem is there's a distinct preference towards serious games, social science research, uh and others that favor mechanics, but away from deeper understandings of the aesthetic qualities of games. The second part comes when you look at industry conferences like here at GDC, at the East Coast Game Conference, or any other professional conference with a game art or visual arts track. Talks at these conferences seem more

related to graphics development than the visual arts. Sessions at GDC 2016 in the visual arts track, for example, had titles like HDR rendering in Lumberyard, Shaders 101, Foundational Shader Concepts for Technical Artists, and every MFA's favorite, Photogrammetry in Star Wars Battlefront. Of the 77 scheduled sessions at GDC 2016 in the visual arts track, only eight cited techniques or concepts explicitly from uh the fine arts such as color theory or composition. So, who cares? Why is this a problem? Many of these attitudes trickle down into academic game programs, appearing in class design, research questions, and the structure of development teams in these environments. In many programs, there's a bias towards software usage and technical art pipelines, and away from studying fine art principles. The dominant subjects in games research focus on the work of game mechanic

designers, while putting artists, composers, and sound designers in utilitarian roles that disincentivize them from being researchers in their own right. The underlying issue for all of these is that we view games as monolithic objects, rather than collections of works by collaborating professionals. And instead of evolving from this monolith, we keep banging our heads against it. So, what can be some practical solutions to this? Well, there are many many many works, all very good. I love these books. Um studying game mechanics or meditations on the nature of play, there are few academic in investigations of things like art production or sound design. Given that many of these understudied disciplines are descended from established fields, there are chances for true impact if you can discover what lies in the mysterious region between games and the arts.

While the use of techniques or references from the broader arts or media history is common in other fields, it's not commonplace in games quite yet. So, remember the 2013 Dagra theme of defragging game studies? I challenge you to do the opposite. Frag games with a BFG, pick a favorite chunk, and milk it for all it's worth. If you're making games as part of your research, there's also benefits to including research agenda items from the arts. Games that emphasize fine art processes in their asset creation have both creative novelty and can get your game displayed in museums and other institutions. Art-inspired games have and can or can and have provided meaningful collaborations, allowing art professionals a real seat at the table and mechanic designers to discover new methods of interactivity. Arts professionals can also be your

subject matter experts on fundable projects that use games in art as education or teach art principles. As for teaching, software is necessary, but we should blend the fine arts into the core of teaching it. Use software as a tool for practicing the arts and teach your students to do the same. We can do this by designing projects that challenge students to answer theoretical questions with software. Teach the visual history of games by having them make retro games in graphic scale and construct. Teach architectural space organization in the Unreal Engine. Reinforce things like proportion and composition in Photoshop concept art courses. So already, these opportunities can lead us down a variety of paths of looking more deeply into games past their mechanics. Because as many practicing game developers will tell you, games are not self-contained productions that consist

only of interactivity. Anyone who's ever gone from consumer to creator will tell you that when they've tried to make even simple games, elements that they took for granted suddenly seemed very big and impressive. Sure, interactivity is one of the things that make games unique, but if fans can understand that games have component parts worthy of study and celebration, why can't we who study games professionally? I know that for me, some of my colleagues, and many of my students, the artistic aspects of games are what excited us, stuck with us over the years, and inspired us to make games our careers. And if given the chance, I think that meaningful collaboration with the arts may be the next great way to make and study games. Thank you. Great segue out of an art school.

So hi, my name's Emma Westecott. I'm an associate professor at OCAD University, which is an art and design school in Toronto, and I wanted to Well, first of all, I I just want to My My pronouns are she and her and I'm I'm going to talk really briefly about some um pedagogic approaches from feminism um for the classroom. So, as a middle-aged white feminist academic, I have significant privilege and job security and I would argue that actually we all have lots of privilege even being here in this room. So, one of the challenges for me as an educator is to think about ways in which I can engage my privilege for my students and for the communities that I work with and for. So, I'm also here representing a Canadian network called ReFiG, which is uh funded by the SSHRC and is invested

in building diversity in game culture, education, and the industry. So, some a lot of the work I'm sort of standing on the shoulders of others and actually there are colleagues who are also part of the network here in the room. So, I'm sort of speaking on behalf of um significant others. So, where I wanted to sort of start really was sort of like describing the work that's necessary as a sort of ecosystem. I think it's impossible to look at your classroom in an in an isolated sense. So, one of the things that we can do is look at um common functions um that can be shared across a range of different sort of like contexts and example of that is an inclusivity statement. So, in the same way that we can see the inclusivity statement as we walk into the sort of main hall of GDC, um we can sort of issue and publish inclusivity statements um in our programs, in our classrooms, and on in our institutions. And what that

does is it sets up a sort of contract or a set of expectations for our students when they come into the classroom about what is and what isn't is acceptable behavior. So, uh the the inclusivity statement we have at our institution is developed with thanks to the different games collective who uh generously developed and published their inclusivity statement in an open source as an open source resource. So, it's available on different games for those of you who wish to sort of to use it in your classrooms and I'd strongly urge you to take advantage of all the work um by the collective um in in in doing so and using it. So, the ecosystem that I'm going to talk about starts from the classroom really, but it sort of moves out and beyond because I don't think, as I said before, that you can isolate activity purely to sort of classrooms. So, we inhabit the ecosystems that go beyond the walls of our institutions. Um I'm particularly lucky where I teach being based in Toronto because we have a really healthy local indie scene um AAA

developers and a much sort of like wider context of sort of production. But, I wanted to start just really talking about some fairly um basic practices that you can use in your sort of like classroom. So, regardless of your course material, I would argue that you could use feminist approaches. So, your content doesn't have to be explicitly feminist. Your class will benefit from engaging with some of these sort of techniques if you like. So, use non-gendered or female pronouns. I always name the player as she and you'll notice that I use the word player, not gamer. Now, there's a very particular reason for that. I use player, not gamer because of how the gamer identity has been tarnished by online violence and I explain that to my students. I use she because I'm a female gamer and we often don't hear that. So, the second part of thinking about how you place yourself in the classroom is is to pick women, pick minority voices.

Women tend to be written out of histories. Um I'm old enough to remember the strong, powerful female designers that were around in the '90s. I've read enough history to understand about Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper. And so, you know, we do have female role models in our history, isn't it? But it's a sort of educate us to make sure that they're taught. So, we need to be aware of our histories. And that's not just historical figures, but it's current makers. So, there's a rich history of both female and feminist makers, academics, critics, and players. So, make sure that you use them in the materials. And I teach both game design and game studies. So, I have access to a rich range of resources across both sort of areas. And it's always worth spending some time looking at the resources that you're using, whether it's in a sort of a liberal studies class or applied design class in terms of enriching the resources that you're offering to your students. So, encourage critical readings as well.

It's an old feminist technique to read against the dominant narrative of a particular text. Encourage your students to play against the rhetoric of a particular game to try and find the edges and the holes. And it's something that players do anyway, right? So, there's no reason why you can't explicitly center on that with in-class playings, out-of-class exercises. And that's part of how you start to build up a notion of sort of criticality amongst your sort of students. I I had a student about 3 years ago who just said, "Well, that's just the way games are." And I was like, "Really? They're 30 years old. You know, that they're not like anything for any You know, they're not set in stone. They're amorphous and they evolve. They come from a particular sort of technological and commercial background, but there's no reason why we shouldn't be pushing for new, more open, more diverse futures." And I think that that's something which sort of starts in the classroom. So, to backtrack, encourage critical readings or playings of the

games. Talk to your students about um rhetorics again. And the sort of second point of this really is that there is Okay, so there's no such thing as a mutual design decision. Designs decisions are made by people in places and time, and often there's very particular reasons for those design decisions. But spread that context and don't s- don't let your students assume that decisions have been made in the ether, right? So, another methodology or technique or approach I use a lot in classrooms is to try and find ways of shifting out of the sort of the teacher-student hierarchy, which is so problematic in terms of sort of setting up um higher hierarchies in classrooms. And there's many fashionable terms for how you can sort of shift around with that power dynamic, but encourage different forms. I mean, in some ways I'm

standing here talking to you reproducing that sort of like power dynamic, but it's really much richer in the classroom to think about splitting groups, letting people speak about and and talk about an area or a game that they have a deep passion about, and present that knowledge and that expertise in a much more sort of flattened hierarchy. The other thing which I think is really important is there's no one right way of making games. There's no one accepted language of game design. And talking about that and allowing and celebrating different types of starting points both to game making and game criticism is really important as a way of including and opening up to different types of voices. So, to repeat, shift out of the expert-student hierarchy, acknowledge a multitude of approaches, and insist on notions of authorship. Games are made by people in places and times. So, these techniques are applicable in every classroom, not just a feminist classroom.

Moving out the ecosystem a little bit, um I wanted to just talk a little about um how us academics can shift our institutional sort of politics. So, one of the key issues of building inclusive spaces is asking yourself how open your culture is to marginalized folk. So, in some ways think about how you can recruit a more diverse faculty. My institution, for example, has job openings that are specifically targeted at people of color and indigenous faculty members. And that's really to address some of the gaps that we have between the sort of student body that's sort of 60% racialized and a faculty group which, unfortunately like me, is largely white. So, we're really interested in trying to sort of push back against that type of sort of like dominance and against that norm. Think about and this is something I heard in a presentation earlier today. Think about scholarships. You know, how can you explicitly reach out to the minorities that you want to attract to your classrooms? But it's not sufficient to just attract them. You have to think about the environment and the setting

within which they're welcome. So, a diverse cohort of students helps create a more inclusive learning environment. So, when you're looking at applications, look beyond the standard requirements for entry level. It might be somebody who's interested coming to your course who has a life experience that will enrich the cohort. So, try to recruit a diverse student body in the same way um as you would recruit or aim to recruit a sort of diverse faculty group. Thinking of Then thinking of further up the hierarchy we have how we engage with our institutions. So, be very vocal if you have the privilege I have in faculty meetings about things that are acceptable and unacceptable across your institution. We have the agency to create the environment within which we want to work, and it's our responsibility of faculty to to create that context. Now, it's not that there

it's not that this is ever a an end as a sort of a finished game. It's important for me to sort of recognize that all of this is is is a process. So, if you're having challenges within your faculty group, within your institution opening up to more diverse approaches, then think about providing learning opportunities for your colleagues to engage with more feminist approaches. Make sure that you review progress and measure yourself and your institution against your own targets to see how you're succeeding and where you're failing, and then focus your attention on that. So, we have responsibility to our students, but we also have responsibility to our institutions to make them safer spaces. There's no such thing as a safe space, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't push towards safer spaces. So, reach beyond institutional walls to build partnerships outside the institution. As somebody who's worked in industry and is also an academic, I would suggest that our student experience is enriched by

that feedback in and out of our institutions. So, volunteer, engage in community work, um whether it's offering free workshops, event support, access to equipment or expertise. I have the privilege of equipment. I as much as I can, I try and open up the doors to my research lab to community members to come and use the equipment free and in an accessible manner as possible. Now, that's something which benefits local community. Benefiting the local community benefits my students. So, think about opening and partnering with local schools to offer a sort of free workshops and educational initiatives into your into your sort of school settings. And that's something which works towards opening up the pipeline so that you have a more diverse entry point. Think about how you can engage students in said community initiatives. And in some ways that sort of brings us back to the classroom, which is invite local developers, specifically indie developers and artists, to teach

in your program and importantly pay them. You know, it helps them survive to continue doing the wonderful work that we sort of all celebrate here at events like this, but it also ensures that there's up-to-date expertise with your students, with your student group and student body. So, I hope that what I've done with this diagram, and I have many fewer slides and many less art skills than some of my sort of colleagues here, has shown how um how we're attempting to sort of build uh an ecosystem that sort of feeds into a more inclusive sort of classroom space. So, I'd I'd suggest that this can be seen as a diversity ecosystem. And just as I finish, um I would just like to remind us all to use your privilege. We all have it. We're all privileged enough to be here. Think about how you can use it. Thank you.

Hi. I am Bonnie Ruberg. Uh I am a postdoc at USC and assistant professor at UC Irvine. Um this talk is called teaching students to make socially aware games. And a heads-up, it's going to involve a lot of me talking quickly. Involves photos of animals and it involves feelings. So, let's do this. Um first a shout-out to my colleague Jeff Watson. Uh we proposed this talk together and I'm going to try and do my best to channel my inner Jeff. Uh it used to be the GDC Soapbox talks were called rants. Soapbox sounds friendlier and less angry, right? Look, here are some adorable Victorian children standing on soapboxes. That one has a kitten. Screw that kitten. This is a rant. I am angry and you should be, too. By the way, when you Google image search angry people, you get women hitting men

with frying pans. That's some gender nonsense. Here is the Queen of England. Apparently, people think she looks angry. Good for her. So, why am I angry? The world is in flames. Higher education, the arts, and knowledge itself are all under attack. This country and many around the world are rapidly becoming drastically less safe for people who are different. Women, LGBT people, people of color, immigrants, and people of different religions. If that fills you with rage, good. Rage is how the body resists. Here's a quote from black feminist activist Audre Lorde. She was writing in 1981, but this totally applies today. "A well-stocked arsenal of anger is a useful tool against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being." Okay, so the world's on fire and we're angry. Let's talk about games education. Games education is in a period of rapid growth, right? We know that. Established programs are getting bigger, new game

programs are starting all the time. This is the key moment for laying the groundwork that will shape what games education looks like for decades to come. Here's where the ranting starts. So, I told you this was called teaching students to make socially aware games, but a more fitting title might be something like video games are expressions of culture, goddammit, and it's ethically irresponsible of us as educators and human beings, especially given the garbage fire that is politics today, to send our students out into the world without teaching them to think about the fact that the work they produce exists in a broader social context. Like, to seriously think about that and actually care. Or if you want to snap your title, let's just go with teaching students to make games under fascism. So, even with all the wonderful things that we're accomplishing in games education

today, I want to tell you that it is not enough. It's not enough to produce great developers with top technical skills. It's not enough to graduate students with polished portfolios who land industry jobs. It's not enough to teach students to make games. They need to know that games have meaning. They need to learn to make games that don't just replicate all the things that are already wrong with video games, right? All those implicit and explicit biases that we see all around us. Whether our students like it or not, the games they make influence and are influenced by culture, and they need to know that. A lot of them have grown up in these online games cultures that perpetuate this this really profound misconception that because video games are fun, that means they're just for fun. And they think that games exist in this apolitical vacuum and that when we think about them as expressions of culture, that's just for so-called social justice warriors, right? But we in this room, we know better than that. We know that the

games that we make and our students make, it represents uh something that really matters in the world, right? And in my experience, once students enter the classroom, some of them can be shaken of this misconception quickly. Usually these are students who are women or queer people or people of color, people with disabilities. They're the students who don't have the privilege of pretending like they don't see the discrimination in games. And they don't see how these larger forces of society and power can be a force of change right through games. And these are just some of my amazing USC students being amazing. Um but there are other students who respond to this idea that games and game design have social meaning with indignation. So, I recently gave a talk to a class of first years that included a discussion of colonialist themes in No Man's Sky. Two men or two students stood up and stormed out. The remaining 48 engaged in a lively debate. So, I say let those two walk out. Let them see that no amount of arm crossing

and dramatic groaning can bully us into sanitizing their games education. We have an ethical imperative to shape our students into creators who are at the very least aware of how social issues intersect with their games. And I'm not arguing that our students should be only be making serious games or games for change. I mean, by all means have them make cute games or strange games or even violent games. And this, by the way, is um firm exercise we did in class the day after the election and where we were working on self-care by making these strange silly little sticky note comics. Um but even when students make games like that, these silly games or violent games, they need to be asking themselves the right questions. They need to ask themselves questions like, "Who am I representing in my game? What values does this game communicate?" So, here's an example. Three different undergraduate teams in three different programs made three different 2D uh side scrollers and they were all in some way about gender.

Which sounds great, right? So, the first one uh is a game about navigating childhood social situations as a non-binary person. The second one is about gay men at a sit-in in 1960s Los Angeles and they're fighting off the police by kissing. And the third one, which I'm not going to show you a screenshot of, is about shooting women in bikinis who happen to have the faces of famous feminist authors. Which one of these games is not like the others? It's this one. Sorry, corgis. Uh the students who made this feminist in bikinis game, they weren't trying to be misogynistic, right? They were trying to be funny. In fact, on paper, they did a good job. Um they successfully demonstrated technical skills and teamwork. And now, on their portfolios, when they show them to potential employers, they have a game that is well-developed and tone-deaf as hell. These students needed someone to step in and say, "Hey, this is why this is not going to fly." They needed more courses that explicitly linked games and

society. They needed more opportunities to practice analyzing games, not because they're going to go off and become scholars, per se, but because they need to be better critical thinkers. They need to understand why they're making what they're making and what messages it sends. And then, if they still want to be dicks, they can be dicks on purpose. This is not a one-time issue or an unlikely edge case, right? Socially unaware games are being made in our games programs every day. So, what can we do about it? First, we lead by example. We accept that video games are political, that the way that we make video games is political, and that the way that we teach students to make video games is political. That's true regardless of our personal politics or the personal politics of our students. That is just true. We speak candidly about the social and ethical challenges that we face in our own creative practices. We participate in the cultures of our departments and build constructive dialogue. We become

active advocates and not just well-intentioned allies. So, I I know lots of wonderful games faculty, um people who I really admire, who say, "I don't bring politics into my classroom." Guess what? Politics are already in your classroom. Identity and culture and the risk of reinforcing oppression and the power to do social good, those are already in your classroom. They're in the transgender student who is too distracted to pay attention to your lesson on level design because they're frantically searching for information about how to get their gender legally changed before new anti-LGBT legislation sets in, right? They're the Muslim students who can't travel with your team with their team to show off their game because they're afraid of being harassed by the TSA. Or they're in these subtler moments, right? Like maybe a student who's on the autism spectrum who's uncomfortable speaking out in large groups and can't figure out how to make themselves heard in a room full of outspoken gamers. So, pedagogy is one thing we can

do and it's something we can all do right now, right? We can give readings like Values at Play in Digital Games. We can assign videos from the advocacy track in the GDC Vault. One of my students' favorites is Todd Harper's portrayals and pitfalls of fatness in games, to name just a few examples, right? We can share articles about how playing Pokémon Go can put black men's lives in danger or about how using mental illness as a game mechanic can make for good design but socially irresponsible game making. We can have our students play games like Lim or Assassin's Creed, which are games that use design to explore racial or gender passing. We need to do these things like like was already said up here, right? Early and often. Teaching students to make socially aware games isn't a challenge that's solvable with just one lecture or just one course. The design and development of games can't be separated from culture and students need to learn that from the very beginning. I know that revamping a games program or even a single course is difficult. I'm part of the team at UCI that is

revamping the games major as we speak and I totally recognize that sometimes we have to prioritize what's mission critical. This is mission critical. Our students need this. Socially aware students make better games. They make this work that they can be proud to share throughout their career because it's thoughtful and well-informed. The games industry needs this. Our students are the next generation of developers. They're the ones who can bring change to video games and make them more inclusive. And you know what? We need this. Right? There's never been a more crucial moment to train our students to be politically engaged citizens. They're struggling with their place in the world today and we are struggling, too. This is not the time to pretend like the craft of game making stands separate from those struggles. This is a time to get angry. A time to challenge our students, to empower them, and to teach them to design hope. Thank you.

Well, that was awesome. Thanks, Bonnie. Excuse me. All right. All right, my name is Marcelo Viana. Uh I am originally from Brazil, but I've been in California since 2002. Uh currently I um I work at UC Santa Cruz and in the Santa Cruz County area teaching um and I want to talk to you today about why student autonomy matters. Um the talk um I want to start with a pretty basic question, so indulge me for a second. What is the purpose of education? We don't usually spend much time thinking about this question. It seems sort of broad and basic, almost silly to

even consider. But to better address my topic, I need to stay take a step back first before we can move forward. To American philosopher and educator John Dewey, the goal of education is the creation of power of self-control. But by self-control, Dewey meant the ability to free oneself from external and more importantly internal control, the kind that our own habits of thought impose upon us. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking in 1947 said, "The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically." Which is a widely a widely accepted view of education. Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, uh perhaps the most influential thinker on the topic in the late 20th century, argued for a democratic practice of education that liberates the individual from all forms of domination. A process of self-actualization that empowers them to act upon and change the world. To author and educator, bell hooks, education should develop an engaged and

critical consciousness. To her, the role of teachers is not to merely share information, but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students. The common thread between these examples is a focus on education as a process that nurtures critical thinking, allowing us to better understand understand the world and our place in it. But today, to say that education must foster critical thinking is a cliché. It's repeated so often as to be completely erased of meaning. It's and when we do it's a truism and we take it for granted as if it's a self-evident truth. But when we do that, it loses its original power. To remain true, it must be constantly renewed and made integral part of our practices day after day, year after year. When we teach games, especially at high school and undergraduate levels, we tend to fall into this trap. I think we make one of two assumptions. Uh one, it's not our job to worry about critical thinking. Uh we just teach games.

Or that by learning how to make games and think about games, our students will be able to, in the words of Dr. King, think intensively and think critically about the world and their place in it. But it might be useful to look at what he said next. Uh the function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically, but education which which stops at efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reasons but no morals. We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character, that is the goal of of true education. I wanted to revisit these ideas today because for many of us, and especially for our students, this is a time of crisis, of definition. If you teach mostly marginalized students, you know this all too well. This is a good time to renew our commitments and re- re-examine our practices. Instead of finding a way forward in education, our steward our students are now stuck with a system that that seems entirely uninterested in the formation of what Dr. King called character, what we might

call citizenship, and treats education simply as a path to employment, nothing more. Everything else is a is a distraction. Career development is fine. People need to eat. Uh but um I think when we see our work in those limited terms, we tacitly accept an impoverished role and limit our students' imagination and constrain their possibilities. So if we accept a broader definition of education that includes critical thinking, how do we reconcile it with teaching an ever-evolving array of game-making skills, a job that is daunting enough by itself? To do so, uh I believe that we must not only look at the content of our courses, but also incorporate a serious discussion of the way that we practice teaching. In other words, we have to look at not only what we teach, but how we teach. In my view, student autonomy is an essential component to critical to a critical education experience. My favorite definition of autonomy is the inner endorsement of one's actions. In an autonomous classroom, the teacher

treats students as equals, listens to them, learns from them, and adapts the curriculum to their backgrounds and interests instead of delivering a static curriculum uh to an obedient obedient classroom, treating students as empty ves- vessels to be filled with knowledge. This is not an indict- indictment of lectures. I'm giving you one right now. Uh but they have their purpose, but it's also in it's also not a manifesto for a kinder, gentler form of education. Kinder kindness and respect are essential. They're not enough. I'm talking about a deeper, more fundamental reimagining of our roles and changing the structure that we create in our classrooms. The form of power that we exert. Here's a simplified comparison of the autonomous and the traditional model. In an autonomous classroom, students are self-motivated as opposed to externally motivated. They're engaged, not obedient. They feel challenged, not directed. Their interests are integrated into the curriculum and not ignored. They make choices. They don't only

obediently respond to requests. There are a variety of approaches to an autonomy-fostering education, and how you implement it will depend on your specific context. There are These are some general principles that I use in my classroom. Um encourage your students to question the curriculum, adapt it to their interests and background, help them teach each other, provide and provide a rationale for your assignments, listen to them, learn from them. This is probably the most important part of the uh of this model. I often teach after-school courses for at-risk teenagers. I get them when they're tired, hungry, and have just spent their entire day in the most soul-deadening environment they know, school. Uh in fact, when I asked them to teach uh to design games based uh on school, the most common thing they come up with is prison. And yet, when I teach with these principles, I don't have to offer incentives or scold them to show up and do the work. They just do. When they slack off or look bored, I read it as a

flaw in my teaching and and I break down in process. The tendency for us in these situations is to tighten our grip. That's a mistake. Excessive control may be causing the issue in the first place. We have to remember that compliance is not the same as engagement. A quiet, obedient classroom may be doing the work, but it does not mean that learning is taking place. A loud, messy classroom is nothing to be scared of. What I'm scared of is boredom. Implementing this approach will also benefit their careers. I don't think that we I necessarily have to justify um this methodology with these metrics, but research does show that this model is significantly more effective in developing non-cognitive skills, such as self-initiative, grit, self-control, etc. when compared to the traditional model. These skills will serve them whether they go into the AAA world, decide to go uh the indie route, or choose to do something else entirely. But this work has other important consequences as well.

If students spend month after month, year after year in environments that teach obedience and passivity, and punish them when they question authority, we are implicitly teaching them to value assimilation over difference, to be afraid of dissent, and to look for safety in conformity. Or they will look at us as role models and seek to emulate our authority over mutual understanding, believing that control is what guarantees success. Content is key, but so is practice. Teach an inclusive and diverse curriculum, but do so in a controlling, coercive way, and your students will feel it. And they will show it by rebelling with the only tools available to them: inattentiveness, disruptive behavior, boredom, etc. Like James Baldwin once said, "I can't believe what you say because I see what you do." This is specially more uh relevant for students from traditionally more marginalized backgrounds. In an industry that is three quarters white and still despite recent progress overwhelmingly male, asking our students

to conform and learn how to play the game, to learn how to better address the needs of employers who are again overwhelmingly straight, white, and male, is to ask them to conform to habits and norms that were not created for them or by people who look and think like them. We are unwillingly asking our marginalized students to abandon who they are and assimilate. Culture and background matter. Instead, we have to support them to arrive at their game game making practice from their own particular starting points. Much like the pioneers of this industry did decades ago and many independent developers are doing today. By acting with autonomy, they are creating a culture from the ground up. We must create space the space for them to write the rules of the game, not just learn how to play it. And it begins with abandoning the idea that our only job as educators is to turn students into more employable but a disciplined people. Education is not job training. Education is much more.

Games are not just an industry. Games are much, much more. Games and education are incredibly powerful forces in society. We shape culture and we can change minds. The only question is whether we just obediently replicate dominant ideologies or challenge them. It's hard work, but I'd argue that a truly democratic education is necessary, especially in the strange and dangerous world we live in today. Thank you. So, I think we have a few minutes for a couple of questions if anybody wants to direct a question at any one of the speakers. Just step up to the mic if you have a question. Or maybe you're just stunned and taken aback by all the wisdom that was spouted here. Well, if you are, I want to encourage you to do something, which is submit to this venue. There were a lot of people who raised their hands this morning that

this was their first game education summit. We are the people who create this summit. So, if you have a burning passion you want to talk about next year, you can choose Soapbox as a category of submission. So, just know that. You can come up here next year and and get something off your chest as well. Here comes the question. So, it's more of an additional thought than a question. So, to the the presenter who was talking about um using the bad games, the and bad with a capital B, not a lousy game, but a bad game. Um I found that one way in through the ethics for kids who don't actually have that in them to begin with is also about um commerce and business. I had a student who pitched a game because he thought it would be cool called Baby mancer, which was about a evil, you know, evil magician who was animating dead babies to to, you know, be the and so I opened up the class and

so what publisher will publish this game? Bah! So, it turned into fluffy mancer where they were like animating stuffed animals. Uh so, it's an open doorway sometimes, especially for people who are concerned that they might be bringing politics into the classroom. And though I agree that yes, every classroom is political and every game is political and everything we do is political. But, for people who are nervous, especially in this fabulous moment in time, by back dooring it through things that will still reach them and then going, "Well, why wouldn't a publisher do that?" Right? It's it's kind of a safety net for those of you who are not grey-bearded old balding full professors who want to be able to do this stuff with a safety net. So, I just throw that out there. Thank you. Hello. Thank you all for the talks. I as a former you USC student I had a question about the feminist shooting

game just because I'm so curious. Uh The what I wanted to know was what did it from your perspective what did it feel like they were reacting to? Were they reacting to a moment at the university, a moment in the classroom, a moment in gamer culture, or question mark? Um what what was were they doing it for the lols? What was motivating this I don't know just ridiculous thing? Yeah, so I should say that um I've taught game design in a few different places now and that game doesn't come out of USC. I'm in a very dorky way I'm in love with my USC students and they did not produce that game. Um I think I think there was a little bit of reactionary pushback to general like gender issues in games. Um I think there was kind of a sense of so you want us to include women in

games. Well, here are some women in our game. you think we should be engaged with feminism? Here's some feminism in our games. Mhm. Um but again it was it was kind of tongue in cheek, right? It was a definitely an all male team and all cis team. Um It's you know like there's there's the thought of a the start of a thought process in there. It just didn't it needed a lot more guidance to go in a constructive direction. Got it. Okay. Thank you and thank you all for the talks. That was just a really interesting one. Um yeah, thank I just echo what my peer colleague said. A really interesting talk and all the subjects that you touched on a a fascinating and I will be trying to implement them and take them forward. On my way here to the conference today I was listening to a podcast and they were talking about something known as sensitivity readers. I don't know if you've heard that term where you read a book or an upcoming book to see if there's any insensitivities in there that can be addressed. And as the podcast progressed they actually they had an opposing view to this idea of

sensitivity readers where they were talking about okay well when does it become censorship, all right? So I just wanted to get your view on you know cuz that's a great example you give with the bikini game but one perhaps could argue like is it segueing to censorship or how do you play that? I wonder do you have thoughts on this too because this is a question this is a question that comes up a lot with feminist pedagogies just in general so I I think there's always an issue of sort of dominance of voice. I I I think that um part of is part of the argument for sort of like greater diversity. You know I I think if one particular group made a game like that amidst a wide range of different types of games there would be a dialogue in the classroom and in amongst the different types of games that were made there. The problem is is often that type of game is made and sort of like sits in sort of like isolation and what I find is that type of I

haven't had that experience where that type of type of game has come out but if if it had have been proposed in a classroom it would have made many of my other students feel at risk and uncomfortable and it's my classroom so I have a responsibility. So I mean I I would tend to err on discussing it and trying to push towards a diversity of different types of experience. So the other thing another way of putting it is um if something is violent and abusive, then is is there a problem of censorship? You know, do you know do you see what I mean? So, it it it's a sort of it's a delicate issue, but part of me would just say I don't want that type of thing in my classroom and I'm not going to accept it in my classroom. And that may be well seen as censorship and so be it. Yeah, thank you. I know I know there are others. So, thank you very much for your answers. I give way. to just chip in on that and say sometimes bringing up who's your audience is helpful. Like if the

audience is the community in the classroom, then that can change how someone thinks about what they're doing. Yeah, and I think the the quick answer I would give to you is setting aside censorship that I want my students to make that decision consciously. Like if they want to make that game, I want them to know all the things that it implies, you know? Um I just want to say thank you. It's lovely to see um a discussion of feminist pedagogy and to see names like Audrey Lord and bell hooks and Paulo Freire up on the projector here. That's really wonderful um and comforting and welcoming. Um I wanted to ask about there's a lot of discussion about sort of approaching these things from both kind of the micro and macro level and how you you know might think about ways in which inclusivity or you know creating an atmosphere of inclusion operates in your classroom and then at an institutional level. And I wanted to ask everyone here, you know, we all have different levels of privilege within our institution and I think a lot of times you know women,

people of color, and queer folks in an institutional context, you know, there's a lot of coercive pressure to sort of tow the line and you know there also is kind of a danger of you know of you're already in a certain amount of you're already vulnerable in certain ways, right? As as an outlier and your politics can be something that make you more of a target, right? So, how do people here negotiate, you know, maybe working within an institution that you know, they want to change but they also want to keep their job in. I I think for me, if I can answer, I I'm privileged. I have tenure. So it behooves me to try and think about ways I can ally with people to be able to I mean, it's the whole thing of saying use your privilege. I spend a lot of time not necessarily very sort of successfully trying to think about ways that I can do that. So I I don't think that marginalized folk have to take on all

that labor. I think it behooves us as allies to take that labor on ourselves and to use our privilege to to focus on other groups to try and make a better environment for everybody. So I would say if somebody who's relatively junior, it's not your job to do that. As somebody who has tenure, it's my job to think about how I can do that. And so that's one of the ways that I sort of like navigate that particular sort of like dynamic and that's why I emphasize the ecosystem and the fact that it's how we build and support different types of networks using and just thank you for all of your work, right? So one of the things the folk here in here don't know sort of Sarah's work in different games work. My institution benefits from your work, you know, so I think that that's something. So I just want to take the opportunity to thank you publicly for all of your work. It's amazing. I think my answer is I don't know how to do that as junior faculty, but I know that I see my own students. Like I

there are privileges I lack as junior faculty. I'm not tenured, but I see that my own students and especially my undergrads don't have the privilege that I have, right? And I know that I feel like just ethically I can't stand by and watch that responsibility fall on their shoulders. You know, my 18-year-olds who are just figuring out college, they're people of color, they're queer people and I I don't know. I might be putting my my foot in my mouth or whatever, but it's I I can't let it rest on them, you know. Unfortunately, we're at 6:30, but luckily, uh it's the end of the day, and the speakers, I'm sure, are going to migrate for a little while into the speaker area, or who knows, perhaps off to dinner or whatever, but I want to thank everybody for being here, and again, please submit to the Game Education Summit, and have a great rest of the week. What?