Jordan Lynn, my graduate student and IGDA GDC Scholarship recipient, and I were chatting after todays sessions. I had just come from Jane McGonigal’s GDC Education Summit keynote, where a question that Celia Pearce asked had stuck with me. That question was, why haven’t developers made revolutionary designs that challenge, change, and shift human experience towards happiness? This is a 30 year old industry that is only now beginning to find its revolutionary and humanist side. What took so long if we are so cool?
Jordan suggested, and it seemed to strike a chord, that the 30 year lag has something to do with that a generation of gamers are only now reaching points in their lives that they are capable of making games and have a drive or desire to change the world. There is certainly something to that argument. But even children’s books seek to change the world, so I only buy that half way. The other piece of this might be that because, at least traditionally, games require a fair number of people to make, that this can shift significantly the messages trying to be delivered. I don’t doubt that, but that hasn’t stopped Hollywood. So, I think the question still does stand, where are the Mark Twains of videogames?
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