Serious Games in the Age of Media Convergence and Collective Intelligence

Henry Jenkins
DeFlorz Professor of Humanities and Director of MIT Comparative Media Studies

Designing for Behavior in Massively Multiplayer Games

Jack Emmert
Lead Designer
Cryptic Studios

Henry Jenkins
DeFlorz Professor of Humanities and Director of MIT Comparative Media Studies

In his new book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Henry Jenkins describes a world "where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the
power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways." His book describes the emergence of a new participatory culture and a struggle over the terms of this participation. The book discusses the new kinds of collaborations that occur as large scale knowledge communities pool knowledge and work together to solve complex problems. What does all of this mean for serious games?

Are games the key interface to participatory culture in learning, messaging, training, and especially opinion research and expression?

What shifts in the media environment are paving the way for the serious games movement and which are blocking its forward momentum? How can serious games designers tap the collective intelligence and participatory impulses of their consumers? What might we gain by exploring such convergence culture phenomenon as user-generated content or transmedia storytelling as we pursue our own goals as educators and activists?

Biography

Henry Jenkins III, the DeFlorz Professor of Humanities and Director of MIT Comparative Media Studies, has spent his career studying media and the way people incorporate it into their lives. He has worked to establish a number of research projects at MIT including The Education Arcade (with the help of Maryland Public Television), New Media Literacies Project (funded by the MacArthur Foundation), and Convergence Culture Consortium which includes in it's membership Turner, MTV, and GSD&M.

Henry currently writes his own blog on the impact of media on society at henryjenkins.org. He testified in 1999 before the U.S. Senate during the hearings on media violence that followed the Littleton, Colorado shootings, testified before the Federal Communications Commission about media literacy, and spoke to the governor's board of the World Economic Forum about intellectual property law.

His books include Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture (co-edited with Tara McPherson and Jane Shattuc, 2003), From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games (co-editor with Justine Cassell, 1998), The Children's Cultural Reader (editor, 1998), Science Fiction Audiences: Doctor Who, Star Trek and Their Followers (with John Tullock, 1995), Classical Hollywood Comedy (co-editor with Kristine Brunovska Karnick, 1994), Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (1992), What Made Pistachio Nuts?: Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic (1992), and his most recent work, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (2006).

He earned his doctorate in communication arts from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a master's degree in communication studies from the University of Iowa.

Designing for Behavior in Massively Multiplayer Games

Jack Emmert
Lead Designer
Cryptic Studios

One of the most fascinating aspects to massively multiplayer games like City of Heroes is the amazing user behaviors that take place inside hugely social online worlds. Whether collaboration, leadership, or peer-to-peer education, researchers everywhere are documenting and discussing the social phenomenon of online games. This is great, but if we're going to use MMP design ideas and technologies to create new styles of education, collaborative environments and leadership training, we need to look at how these games actually instill and support these behaviors. Many of the core behaviors that fascinate people about online worlds did not just emerge of out thin air.

In this talk Jack Emmert, the lead designer of City of Heroes, will detail what goes into the refined design of hit multiplayer games and the specific approaches games in the multiplayer space use to foster collaborative and other behaviors that many recognize as the foundation of next-generation knowledge worker skill set. The goal is for audience members to get a better understanding of how game designers approach the social aspects of player-to-player interaction and production. At the same time, audience members will come to better understand the potential massively multiplayer environments might have beyond entertainment if the best ideas developed in commercial games are applied to the challenges faced outside of entertainment.

Biography

Jack Emmert is a long time gamer and comic book aficionado. His first foray into gaming was, of course, Dungeons & Dragons^R. His professional career in the hobby game industry started at a local comic book store on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Showcase Comics. He earned his first Master's degree in ancient history from the University of Chicago, and his second from Ohio State University. During this period Jack also wrote supplements for a variety of gaming lines, including Deadlands, Hell on Earth, DC Universe, and Marvel Superheroes. He left academia in July 2000 to co-found Cryptic Studios, and design the hit MMP games City of Heroes^R and City of Villains^TM. Jack is currently working on the much anticipated Marvel MMORPG.