I could have used this edutainment game back in spring when I was working on my project for Human Rights Journalism class. I'd chosen the topic of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and their first case that's gone to trial happens to focus heavily on child soldiers.

What Is It?
Global Conflicts: Child Soldiers is a 3D flash game where players take the role of an ICC investigator out to interview the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda. To accomplish this, you've got to interview a ton of other people to find out why the guy is resisting the ICC and what he's up to in Uganda and work within a time limit so you don't miss the meeting with the LRA leader.

For those of you oblivious to global conflicts: 1) the LRA are generally considered bad people who do bad things in Uganda, 2) nobody can or will stop them for whatever reason, which is why the ICC wants to arrest their leader and bring him to trial at the Hague and 3) the ICC can issue arrest warrants, but relies on local authorities to actually slap the cuffs on the bad guys. So, no, this isn't a cop game.

What We Saw
I played the Child Soldiers demo twice, which seems like it's the full game – only there might be a modification to the timer that makes it go by faster.

How Far Along Is It?
It's out now.

What Needs Improvement?
Lousy Cut Scenes: At one or two points in the game, the realistic 3D in-game graphics were replaced with colorful still cartoons and music to depict a traumatic event. These cut scenes suck because 1) they don't jibe at all with the realistic 3D graphics and 2) the music that plays during them sounds like bad porno music. Also, the settings don't seem to match the events in the game. The first time I triggered one during a questioning sequence in a children's shelter, I honestly thought I'd lost the game was being treated to a game over cut scene where all of Uganda's grass huts burn to the ground.

Show Me, Don't Tell Me: During that children's shelter sequence, a dialogue box popped up to tell me the LRA was attacking and that the child soldier I was question was being taken away. Then the lousy cut scene played in which I didn't see 1) the shelter I was in or 2) the child I was talking to being taken away. To be fair, when the cut scene ended, he was gone and the inside of the shelter looked a little burned and suddenly devoid of furniture. But other than that, I feel like the game missed a huge visual cue and the opportunity to show me something dramatic that would drive home the severity of the child soldier problem.

Maybe A Little Too Oversimplified: Child Soldiers is a tough topic, so I expect a little bit of oversimplification when it comes to edutainment. However, I can't help but feel like Global Conflicts cut too many corners when it comes to portraying the problem of Child Soldiers. For example, I only saw one mutilated child, only got to talk to one child soldier, saw no instances of children being rejected from their homes for what they'd done and most of Uganda looked way too clean.

What Should Stay The Same?
Tricky Dialogue Trees: This isn't a simple point-and-click edutainment game where you can glaze over while navigating dialogue trees. The boss fight with the LRA leader requires you to both read carefully what the guy is saying and what you're about to say, and it asks you to listen for a telltale heartbeat that indicates you should argue with the gun-toting madman. Edutainment is way more effective with writing like this.

You Get More From The Internet Than You Do From The Locals: I went through two dialog trees and came away with only about four Statements and two Arguments out of the 11 or 15 I needed to use during the boss fight. Then I went to the Internet café in Uganda and got something like six of each in half the number of clicks (and therefore half the amount of time). You could argue that's poor game design, but I say it's a healthy dose of realism.

The 3D Walk Around: This entire game could have been a text adventure and it would have been way less effective as a result. I appreciate the visuals, and I appreciate the game asking me to do legwork like a real investigator would have to in order to get to the bottom of what's going on in Uganda.

Final Thoughts
It's tempting to give edutainment a break on quality standards. The game exists to fulfill an important purpose other than entertainment, after all, so I feel bad bullying it for something trivial like graphics. However I still can't help but wish this game had better music and better visuals so that it would be a better game instead of just a reading exercise with 3D graphics. I can't help but wish the consequences in the game were more game-y than realistic to better illustrate the difficulties of the real-life situation (e.g. You and your driver are chased and shot at by people who may or may not be the LRA on the way to the meeting and then you have to decide whether or not to bring it up with the LRA leader when you sit down with him). But despite my dissatisfaction with Child Soldiers as a gaming experience, I can't help but be glad it exists to better illustrate a serious problem a lot of people don't think about.

"The underground Railroad was a much more complex issue that it's been made out. When you push a person to a point where they have nothing to lose, that's when you create a formidable enemy. Ultimately, human beings are going to be free."

The story of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad that was responsible for liberating so many slaves during a darker time in our country's history is often over-simplified, in order to present a more appealing version of the story. Such simplified tales provide both children and adults with a clear hero and a clear goal, making it easier to understand without going into some of the more disturbing details on the length that slaves would go to take back their lives. As Newby-Alexander puts it, "When you ask people to describe the Underground Railroad, they think of Harriet Tubman on foot, with a gun. Most slaves didn't escape that way."

In fact, many slaves never escape at all, losing their lives in the cramped holes of smoked-out ships, or simply captured, punished, and returned to their "owners". This is the sort of realism that the professor seeks to elicit in her video game. The player will be forced to make decisions - which path to take; who to trust - and not every decision will be the right one. The player, in the role on an escaped slave, can potentially be captured or even killed, but Newby-Alexander assures, "Even wrong choices in the game will lead to learning." In fact, while the game is aimed at middle and high school students, the plan is to make it challenging enough that success isn't always a foregone conclusion. "I don't want to dumb-down the game." If only more developers felt this way, right?

In order to facilitate the project, the professor was recently awarded a grant of $100,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities to create the interactive video game. She will pull on her own knowledge gained through extensive research of the Underground Railroad in the Norfolk, Virginia area in order to help assure the game's authenticity. She's working with a local playwright Terrence Afer-Anderson to write the script and develop characters, and next year will work on programming with the aid of various other professors and historians. The plan is to launch the PC game locally by the year 2011.

I'd expect the subject of an Underground Railroad to drum up the usual criticisms and arguments. Video games are not the medium to respectfully depict tragic or profound events. A video game version of the slaves' struggles to be free would trivialize sad struggles. Still, I believe that if handled with the respect it deserves, the video game could shed new light on the truth behind one of America's darker eras.

Source: The Virginian-Pilot July 5th 2009 Edition

That's the idea behind the annual Life. Love Game Design Challenge, now in it's second year.

Jennifer Ann's Group today announced the winners of their second annual flash game design contest, handing out $1,500 to Jared Sain for first place. Runners Up Brian Crick and Toronja Concepts each received $100. A door prize of another $100 was awarded to Bence Joful.

All four of their games are playable over on the Jennifer Ann's Group webpage. As a judge I've already played through all of the entries and was surprised to find how the developers tried to tackle the serious issue this time around.

The games include versions of tower defense games, a music game and even a few click adventure titles.

Other judges for the challenge were group founder (and my brother) Drew Crecente, advisory board member Dr. Elizabeth Richeson, Independent Games Festival chairman Simon Carless, Kotaku's Stephen Totilo, GameDaily editor-in-chief Live Goad, Persuasive Games co-founder Dr. Ian Bogost, and professor Brenda Brathwaite.

2009 Game Contest Winners [Jennifer Ann's Group]

The program isn't using the game to teach music, it's just meant to engage student in the arts, to get them interested in music. Which, I think, is a fantastic idea. Sure, Guitar Hero and Rock Band would do the same thing, but including instruments they are both more expensive.

The program is, in part, a reaction to the D.C. School Chancellor's new policy to make sure every school has a music teacher on staff. The Wii music program will eventually be in 50 cities throughout the country.

Maybe Harmonix or Activision will take a page from Nintendo and test out a program that would introduce younger children to music through their games. I know that's why Tristan is studying classical guitar now.

Nintendo Wii Debuts in D.C. School [Fox DC]

Jetset is still about the absurdity of security at airports, but now it comes with a bunch of extra airplane-safe bells and whistles. In the game you play as a security office making sure that people don't bring a constantly changing list of prohibited items onto a plane.

The items, all inspired by real events in airport security, have to be plucked from the lines of waiting people. The game includes 100 airports, a new ability to strip search and high score tracking. Jetset also automatically selects the airport you're playing in based on where you are actually based using the iPod's location service.

The $5 game lets you collect virtual souvenirs from airports and save them up to redeem Jetset travel trophies. Sounds like a neat addition to an already fun and provocative game.

Jetset: A Game for Airports

To enter, you have to be a student or someone who really, really wants to make a Serious Game. The jury prizes are 5000, 2500 or 1000 euros worth of gift checks in the winner's local currency, while those voted Most Popular by internet users will score 500 euros worth of gift checks. There's also the prize of fame and something shiny to put on your resume.

Hit the jump for full details on the contest.

To enter, participants have to choose one of three topics: 1) improving players' knowledge of telecommunications; 2) encouraging players to be eco-citizens using telecommunication technologies; or 3) ending isolation and exclusion via telecommunications.

Once you've picked a topic, create a Flash game that sticks to the theme. And, not that I'm a judge or anything, but I recommend making your game fun.

Next, contestants should head to whosegame.com to register their game. And finally, contestants need to upload their entries before midnight on March 31, 2009.

Full details are available at whosegame.com. A big thanks to Professor Henry Lowood for pointing this out.

The contention here isn't that people have never cried while playing games, but either that it's an irrelevant question or that it wasn't the actual game part that made you cry — it was the narrative elements, which are not exclusive to games. I'm not at all convinced I agree with his argument entirely, but it's an interesting proposition:

This is the nub of the issue here: a story can make you cry by empathising with the protagonist (or another character), but a game (when viewed as a formal system) cannot do this. It follows that the only way that a videogame can make you cry is by using narrative tools that have nothing to do with games as formal systems whatsoever. So even though, for instance, many people report that they cried when they played Final Fantasy VII at the fateful scene (and indeed, several other cRPGs also show up in player studies as having provoked tears) the moment that actually brought the player to tears was a non-interactive cut scene. It wasn't the game (in the systems view) that made them cry – it was the story – and there never was a question as to whether stories could make you cry.

As usual with these types of articles, the comments are just as interesting as the article. As Bateman notes in the comments section, he intentionally pushed the 'games as play' and 'games as systems' arguments to their most extreme ends, hoping it 'would make for more lively debate.'

A Game Has Never Made You Cry [ihobo]

I'm putting the finishing touches on my proposal for FDG '09 and kind of wish the timing worked out better for this conference, too (damn quarter system). Last year sounded like a pretty good time — and it's even bigger this year. So if you've got a paper or presentation up your sleeve, you've got until February 16th to submit it. The full CFP is below:

Games+Learning+Society 5.0: Learning Through Interaction
http://glsconference.org
June 10-12, 2009 Madison, WI
CALL FOR PAPERS

Back by demand and now expanded to accommodate last year’s waiting list, the GLS conference this year will features substantive discussion and collaboration among academics, designers, and educators interested in how videogames –- commercial games and otherwise -– can enhance learning, culture, and education. This year’s theme of “Learning through Interaction” highlights the expansive nature of our definition of games & game culture to include research and design in areas including popular culture and fandom, interactive design more generally, and digital/visual cultures. This three-day conference will be held at the UW’s historic Memorial Union, overlooking downtown Madison's beautiful Lake Mendota.

Conference highlights also include keynotes by leaders in both academics and industry, interactive workshops on game design and games research, both individual and symposia presentation sessions, “chat n’ frags” in the arcade for hands-on gameplay, an evening poster session over cocktails & hors d'oeuvres, an evening machinima festival in the playhouse theatre, and fireside chats that enable thorough, cozy conversations among speakers and attendees. We encourage the submission of traditional paper sessions as well as innovative talk formats which focus on game design, game culture, and games' potential for learning and society more broadly.

Confirmed Speakers include: James Paul Gee, Idit Caperton, Alex Chisholm, Doug Church, Mia Consalvo, Elonka Dunin, Drew Davidson, Lisa Nakamura, Bonnie Nardi, Kurt Squire, Constance Steinkuehler, Steve Thorne, Eric Zimmerman.

Submissions are due online by February 16, 2009. Complete submission guidelines can be found on the submissions site at http://glsconference.org.

The Games+Learning+Society (GLS) Conference is sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Academic ADL Co-Lab. For information on how to sponsor this event, contact the conference coordinator at gls(at)seanmichaeldargan(dot)com.

[via Terra Nova]

The titles selected for BusinessWeek Arcade had little to do with business, being a collection of seemingly random indie hits. Ian turns an eye towards the comment section, which expressed surprise at the collection:

The best part of this incongruous effort is the comments that call out its incongruity. One reader queries, "is this a desperate attempt to attract an audience? what does this have to do with covering business?" Another adds, "Why is BusinessWeek stooping to this sort of thing? A couple of months ago they had a blog about the best airport pickup sites and now this. Grow up and stick to the basics! If this is what I can expect from this website in the future then I'll have to reconsider my subscription." What's interesting about these comments is that they don't have anything particularly negative to say about games as a medium for entertainment, business, or journalism; they simply question the wisdom and relevance of including seemingly random, if quite lovely, independent games on a business magazine website.

He notes that the design of the BusinessWeek Arcade page implies something more than a "see also," but it hasn't been updated since its launch last March — was it (is it) a mere curiosity, or a "an openness to something more"?

BusinessWeek Arcade [Georgia Tech Journalism & Games Project]

It's worth a read — a lot of issues readers raised are brought up, such as "What's wrong with games as simply entertainment? If you want intellectual stimulation, why not turn to something else?":

Nothing is wrong with viewing games as entertainment, but there is so much more that could be done! Games have the capability to be incredibly experiential because of their capability to provide interactivity.

As designer Dan Cook from Lost Garden wrote, it's the difference between hearing about the time someone decided not to pull the trigger, and deciding for yourself not to pull the trigger. Actually going through experiences yourself is much more compelling and personal than reading a story. The opportunities are too ripe not to pursue the possibilities.

Additionally, it's sad for someone who loved games while they were younger to have to turn away later in life because the days become busier. Other activities, sports for example, are still viewed as a worthwhile use of time, but only because of some other benefit in addition to being entertainment, such as exercise.

Video games also have the capability to provide the same kind of peripheral benefit. This doesn't mean entertainment should be shown the door, but I think even popularizing the idea that games could be something more is a good step.

He also appends a challenge at the end, a game design competition — it's pretty open-ended, and you can find more information at his blog.

A Response to 'Outgrowing Games', With A Bonus Competition

This year was apparently a record year, with entries up across the board for a total of 226 entries in the main competition (up 30% from last year) and 145 for the student showcase (up 15%). On the entires, there was this to say for both parts of the competition:

Examples of the entries span already announced indie titles, including Jason Rohrer's Between, alternate reality RPG Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden, visually lush point and click adventure Machinarium, and art-game I Wish I Were The Moon, through previously little-discussed titles such as Pieces Interactive's "first walk'em up" Walkie Tonky, new Nifflas-designed title Night Game, and Lexaloffle's "ecological action game" Conflux.

... a great diversity of student-made games with original concepts are showcased, with examples including GumBeat, in which you "...blow bubble gum and gather enough supporters to your cause to topple the anti-gum government", High Moon, a "abstract post-apocalyptic zombie western robot romance in 3 acts", and It's MimeTime, in which "you are a female mime artist in Paris, who must earn as much as possible, by miming your way through an invisible maze."

Both the '09 main competition entries and the student showcase entrants are available for viewing; I'll be looking forward to the final results.

2009 IGF Announces Record Entries For Main, Student Competitions [GameSetWatch]

Considering the creators describe it as "more like an explorable painting than an actual game," this is no mean feat. They cover all the typical stuff (what went wrong, what went right), as well as download statistics, appendices featuring the people behind the game, and a section on reviews:

Overall, the reactions to the game (gathered from the articles, their comments sections and personal messages), fall into three categories.

Of course there is the expected response of the typical gamers whose desire for zombies whenever they see a cemetery is apparently insatiable. They tended to describe The Graveyard as "boring". Of course.

A little bit up the ladder of human civilisation, we find the people who were turned on by the idea but turned off by the actual experience. They were "disappointed". From what we can see, this was either caused by a failure on our part to maximize the qualities of the game or by certain expectations coming from the player.

Despite the fact that games are supposed to be interactive, many gamers still seem to be incredibly passive when it comes to the meaning of their entertainment. They expect to be spoonfed and don't seem to have any experience with literature, modern theater or fine art (or even art films) which require active participation, not just of thumbs and index fingers but also of heart and brain.

A final type of response was the simply "delighted" one. These people really enjoyed the game. And/or they were happy to see the experimentation that we're doing with the medium.

Ok, they sound a touch bitter at times, but it's a really nice piece on an interesting game — and worth wading through to read.

Postmortem: Tale of Tales' The Graveyard [Gamasutra]

I'll be speaking on a panel about the relationship of video games and real world violence with Columbine Super Massacre RPG creator Danny Ledonne and occasional Kotaku contributor Bob Denerstein.

Ledonne and I have a long history: I was the first person to speak with him on the record, for the Rocky Mountain News, later I interviewed him about the Dawson shooting and then broke the news of his game being pulled from the Slamdance Game Festival. While Ledonne and I haven't always seen eye-to-eye, I've always found his take on things thoughtful and interesting. So the discussion should be as well.

The details for the talk can be found on the link.

Events: Deadly Games: Echoes of Columbine [Denver Film Festival]

There are dozens of ways to express the same thing in a language, depending on the circumstances and ways the speaker wishes to interact with their surroundings. In comparison, video games have far less choices but that does not rule out calling them ‘tiny languages’. Their size then being directly proportional to the number of options given to a player. It can be tough to pick up on this in a mostly linear game like God of War because it has so few options that one can’t really appreciate the ‘games as language’ argument. That’s a game that falls under Hideo Kojima’s ‘games as museums’ design theory, and is more about delivering a series of set experiences that the player roleplays through. On the other hand, games such as Grand Theft Auto IV and Far Cry 2 on a greater level represent enough choices compounded together that the first indications of a language start to form.

Jeffries notes in the comments that this is sort of the converse of something that Ian Bogost has written extensively on — the ability of games to communicate at masses of people.

Games as Language Systems [PopMatters]

Prof Stone said: "If our research proves that it works come 2009 we will start trying it out on real soldiers.

"It could be rolled out across all the services. It would be Brit soldiers who would benefit."

He explained: "In very basic layman's terms it is a computer game with smell.

"The smell system we are currently conducting research into is very new.

"We are looking into whether it is worth doing, to introduce smell into our games training. We need to make sure it is going to help troops and is not just a gimmick.

The scientists are also looking into defence mental health, with Prof Stone adding: "Smell is so closely linked to emotion and memory, it's something that we need to take seriously.

"We have got a number of virtual environments already in place and are now adding smells to it to see what effect it has on training."

Prof Stone also thinks the device could be up for sale for the general public in a number of years.

As Kieron Gillen of Rock, Paper, Shotgun noted, we can hope this technology makes its way to a wider audience, "if only as it’ll allow us to claim that a game stinks in a more literal sense."

British soldiers could be trained on a computer game with smell [The Telegraph via Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Who cares if games are played by an older audience? That doesn’t guarantee that it will become a truly respectable medium. Ian Bogost, professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, wrote that games will not be truly expected as a medium until there are more boring games.

Only when games are mundane enough to be accepted as a method to, say, teach us how to drive safely, will games have truly arrived. While the goal isn’t to create boring games, the goal is to approach a world and a public perception where boring games are not outlandish.

So how do we get there? One step at a time. Games like My Weight Loss Coach, or independent titles such as Passage are slowly, one by one, changing the public’s conception of games.

As new titles appear that push the envelope of what people, like my mother, think of as games, we approach an environment where emotional and intellectual discourse is possible.

I don't really agree with him on a number of levels — and don't really like conflating 'serious purpose' with 'maturity,' for it's possible to have wildly entertaining things that are also extremely mature in their handling of a variety of stiuations — but it's one perspective on the issue. I'm also not at all convinced a game like My Weight Loss Coach is changing perspectives on games, per se — many people I know don't make the connection between that sort of 'game' and, say, an RPG or FPS.

Why A Game Designer Outgrew Video Games [GameSetWatch]

... Setting a videogame in a modern setting is still going to raise the issue of tastelessness. Proper writing, mature mission themes, and engaging in conduct that isn’t wanton destruction are all going to be necessary. If you’re going to talk about mature topics, you have to handle them maturely and hope that resonates with the audience. Another issue raised is simply why bother at all? Why set a video game in a modern global conflict or historical moment that could be a blatant glorification of violence in some atrocious setting? Because raising awareness alone is a laudable goal. Going back to Rambo 4 for a moment, the movie managed to accomplish several amazing things despite its incredible violence. It raised awareness of the Myanmar situation so that aid and care were given to an otherwise ignored problem. Karen rebels received an incredible morale boost from the film and even use one of the quotes as a battle cry. A less action-based example, Hotel Rwanda came out ten years after the event but its success forced people to learn about an atrocity that was otherwise ignored. How many teens, how many potential activists, could be informed and contacted by playing a video game about an event? No matter what they’re doing in the game, how you frame and discuss the events they interact with will still control their impressions. Yes, there is potential for abuse here, but there is also great potential for good.

Worth a read, as most of Jeffries' essays are.

Relevant Settings [Moving Pixels]

Estamos Pensando [We Are Thinking] [wall jump explained]

Politics, if we take the word seriously, refers to the actual executive and legislative effort that our elected officials partake in to alter and update the rules of our society. In an ideal representative democracy, the one leads to the other, but in contemporary society the two are orthogonal.

Ironically, this is exactly where video games would find their most natural connection to political speech.

When we make video games, we construct simulated worlds in which different rules apply.

To play games involves taking on roles in those worlds, making decisions within the constraints they impose, and then forming judgments about living in them.

Video games can synthesize the raw materials of civic life and help us pose the fundamental political question, What should be the rules by which we live?

It's a nice roundup of the spectrum of election- and politics-related games, and Bogost has some interesting thoughts on where the 'serious games' industry could perhaps head next.

Persuasive Games: The Birth and Death of the Election Game [Gamasutra]

The Eighties were an exciting time for video games, as graphics and computing power increased to the point where games started to become visually appealing and interactive. Educational games from that decade in particular taught teachers, parents, students, and designers things that are still influencing titles today.

Thanks to the wonders of the web, the original versions of these games are often available online, and there are discs and ports to other platforms floating around as well. Playing the original versions, while nostalgic, also helps remind us what made these games important. Some things they taught us were good (learning can be fun when presented properly). Some things, not so good (skill and drill only gets you so far, even in a game). Read on for a trip down memory lane, a discussion of each game’s significance, and some locations to try out versions for free.

Fun trip back if you're of a certain generation. Stuff like Oregon Trail seems to have taken on a life of its own, and plenty of the other games listed had long lives (and perhaps are still kicking via spiritual successors?).

The Top 10 Most Influential Educational Video Games from the 1980s [Educational Games Research via GameSetWatch]