Games For Change Vol 1.

Highlights from the first major day of Games For Change 2008:

- Chris Crawford suggested that the game industry is "creatively dead, or... perfectly marketed," like he did at GDC '06. He suggested people wanting to do dramatic new things with the medium to "go over, around or under the game industry, but don't waste your time going through it." Unlike his infamous speech at GDC, his message seemed uncannily on-point for a conference where more than half those in attendence are funded academically or via non-profit foundations. Personally, I have to agree that going through the game industry to fulfill your dreams is a waste of your time, and if your dream is of any value, humanity's time. Storytron has gone Alpha as of yesterday. We're going to review Hidden Agenda, the author of that game was also there talking about the early days of games that meant things.

- Some perspectives on doing games for news portals. Highlight: eye tracking metrics!

- Values@Play: a series of experimental games made by students or in collaboration with Mary Flanagan, Celia Pierce and Tracy Fullerton. Some interesting stuff, multiple Monsanto games (I was talking with Rinku about making a game called pHood, but it seems like they got that subject locked down). Watch for critical reviews right here y'all.

- Arrrg!: sort of a cursory intro to ARGs/BUGs. What's intersting: the ludo/narrative divide that we all conjured out of the black ether for digital games, and then recently realized was imaginary, is almost formically alive in the categorical divide between Alternate Reality Games and Big Urban Games. I think stuff like World Without Oil could benefit from strong mechanical feedback, which coupled with progressive disclosure could keep it fresh for non-gamers and gamers alike. One day I'm going to design Bodhisattava Blues.

- XNA: if you abstract XNA to "X", where "X" is some other more interesting content creation platform, maybe one that can serve browser-embedded clients cross-platform, then he actually had a great point. Oddly enough, his comment on getting all your good ideas beaten out of you after ten years in the industry, right around when you might be able to execute them, echoed Chris's earlier comments.

- City Planning: Dave Thomas (not to be confused with the Wendy's guy) and Justin Hollander talked quite sharply about the dynamic conflicts underlying the long-term development of cities, why SimCity is a poor model (hail Stalin!) and suggested ways that better urban planning games might be made, which reflected on more general design in an interesting way. It's like: design a game where the gameplay teaches players to design a city without designing it because it's impossible to "design" a city. Once you understand that, you will have mastered game design.

- Keynote: James Paul Gee and Eric Zimmerman standing in for Jenkins rapped (no beatbox) about the state of procedural literacy and the survival premium that this kind of literacy has in the 21st century, when complex systems interact in ugly ways that threaten us all. Seemed to cement a resolution that the wider community is starting to get how to leverage interactivity, while previous conferences were a bit of a basic primer for noobz.

I got to meet Paolo Pedercini, he's working on a new game called Oilgarchy which is about peak oil, and might do another Monsanto game. Soon, Monsanto games will reign down in a saturation akin to terminator seeds or social network sites. He also told me something that is probably historic, but it hasn't gone public yet.

Leigh Alexander declined my offer to do a Hentai Game for Change.