Hi all – fun video post today. This is the short film I worked on for the National STEM Video Game Challenge. It highlights the incredible work of kids in New York City who attended our fantastic workshops on video game design. It clocks in at just under 5 minutes and the insights from these kids will leave you hopeful about our future. Let me know what you think!
Category: video games
Beautiful: The Launch of the National STEM Video Game Challenge
I’m excited to announce that the National STEM Video Game Challenge, the project that I work on at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, is now open and accepting submissions. The deadline to enter is April 24th and we will hold a culminating awards event in June. It is free to enter and students can work on their own or in teams.
The STEM Challenge is a youth video game making competition that encourages kids in grades 5 -12 to submit playable video games. Last year, the Challenge attracted almost 4,000 submissions. All the of details about the Challenge, a listing of free game making workshops happening across the country, and a host of resources to help kids, as well as their teachers, parents, and mentors, create games are available at the STEM Challenge website: http://stemchallenge.org. If you are interested in being a judge, are a game making professional, or are interested in doing outreach for the Challenge, I would love to hear from you!
Please let me know if you have any questions. I’ll be glad to answer them. I can’t wait to see what you create. Let the games begin!
The Game Agency on Examiner.com
This week I interviewed Steve Baer, Co-founder of The Game Agency. The Game Agency (TGA) creates games to integrate into corporate marketing programs to enhance brand value, increase customer loyalty, and drive innovation.
Hopelab on Examiner.com
I just kicked off my week-long series on Examiner.com of the use of video games in non-traditional gaming markets. First up: Hopelab, a nonprofit that uses video games to help young help fight chronic illnesses and live healthier lives. Check it out at: http://www.examiner.com/x-2901-NY-Business-Strategies-Examiner~y2009m2d1-Hopelab-video-game-takes-on-cancer
Spore: the moment gamers have been waiting for
I’m not a gamer – my hand-eye coordination is about as good as my sense of direction, which is to say it’s non-existent. I’ve never played a Wii or an X-box or a PS2 (or is it PS3 they’re on now?) And yet, I am completely fascinated by the growth of the gaming industry and because of my interest in customer engagement am passionate about finding ways for businesses to use gaming in a constructive business-savvy way.
Enter Will Wright, a legend in gaming, creator of the Sims, who has just released his latest, greatest, and long-developed project: Spore. Borrowing from the ideas of the Green movement and the biological evolution, Wright has created a game that allows players to create worlds, actions taken within those worlds, and then deal with the fallout of the consequences over centuries of time. One of the oddest things about life is that we can make all of these choices and decisions about our environment, our economy, our relations with foreign worlds, but because of the long time span needed to see the full effects of our actions, we often don’t live with the results. Our children, our children’s children, and so, deal with the messes we make.
Wright carries a profound belief that if we could see first hand the damage or delight we cause decades after our passing, we would make more choices that have a long-term benefit. And to top it all off, we have fun along the way creating different creatures. We get to run the world, or rather a simulation of it, for a little while.
Tonight I was telling my friend, Dave, about my sketch comedy writing class and how the difficulty of writing this genre gave me so much more respect for comedians. With Spore, I believe that we could all benefit from playing Boss of the World for a while – maybe we would be able to see that running this planet isn’t as easy as we think it may be. We are now being faced with tough decisions about our future; Spore gives us a way to try out scenario planning in a cost-effective, entertaining, and informative way.
As Ellis Marsalis said to his son Wynton “earn your prejudices.” Meaning, before you go giving your opinion on how to run something, try it out first. Thank you, Will Wright, for dedicating a decade of your life to this project for the sake of the planet.
For photo above, click here.
Christa Avampato 