Hugh Garry

Let them play

One of the saddest things about our educational system is that schools are too keen to turn moments of 'play' into moments of 'learning'. The crayon becomes the pencil then a pen. The lego becomes the exercise book then the ruler and protractor. As Ken Robinson said in The Element"

“Imagination is the source of every form of human achievement. And it's the one thing that I believe we are systematically jeopardising in the way we educate our children and ourselves.” 

When I watched Caine's story I struggled to hold back the tears as it reached it's conclusion. In part they were tears of joy for such a remarkable story, but also tears of sadness that his days of play may soon be behind him with his creative spirit dampened by an industrial model of education the sees work and play as polar opposites.

Best of Playful 2011

SXSW - Fun with the Lights Off

SXSW - Seth Priebatsch Keynote

Scvngr's Seth Priebatsch deliver a brilliant keynote on the 'Game Layer'.

Priebatsch discussed how many of the gaming mechanics seen in the virtual world will be applied in the physical world to create the “Game Layer”.

“It’s brand new and has not been built. The last decade was the decade of social. It took connections between friends, family, and coworkers and put them online. It’s called Facebook. The social layer traffics in connections.”

Priebatsch explains that the under the grading system we’re all familiar with, there’s a constant possibility of failure. One bad day can drop you from an A to a B. This, Priebatsch says, is bad because it’s a game mechanic, and it’s letting people lose in a game you don’t want them to lose. Schools could rather use a progression dynamic whereby everyone starts at zero ‘experience points’ and then works their way up to higher levels.

He then looked at reward schedules and highlighted the failure of the location rewards such as Facebook/Gap collaboration. Once the prizes were won people stopped checking in.

Finally he closed the talk with some communal gameplay. Everyone in the hall was given a colored card. The audience was then asked to swap cards with their neighbors so that each row of seats was the same color. The audience was given 180 seconds to pull of the task, which they did it with a minute to spare. This, he says, is an analogy for how much people can get done with decentralized leadership, using local solutions to global problems.

I pulled together some of the conversation using Storify.

3 Reasons I Love SuperMe

I absolutely love Channel 4's latest games project, SuperMe.

As someone whose recent reading list includes Happiness Hypothesis, Stumbling on Happiness, Delivering Happiness, The Architecture of Happiness and various works by Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi it's fair to say I have a massive interest in the theories of what makes one feel good.

SuperMe is a collection of games, quizzes, videos and tips aimed at educating teens on how to feel good about themselves. It's about dealing with failure, coping with the knocks life brings and recognising the powers we already have within ourselves to achieve a state of happiness. I won't go into detail about how it does that, you'll just have to go play. As good games should be it's really easy to engage (you'll be gripped in seconds) and has multiple layers for deeper engagement.

Other than it being a brilliant game there are 3 other reasons why I love it:

1. It's the best bit of public service media aimed at teens you will see this year. Full stop.

2. It's Channel 4 perfecting the excellent work they've been doing around education for some time. If what they've done so far is to be seen as the working out then this really is the answer. I think they've really nailed the balance needed to make difficult subjects engaging through play. 

3. And most importantly it's worked for me and my son who has recently been having one of those rubbish moments life occasionally brings. For week's I've been trying to simplify and impart my learnings from all the books I've read on the subject. It's not been easy. This has suddenly made my life a whole lot easier. It's all there, in simplistic terms, with videos of great people as real-life examples of how happiness can be achieved. Win!!!

So last night I was into my 4th hour of SuperMe (it's research I tell you) when my son looked over my shoulder. "You still playing that game?" has asked as he tore his eyes away from Call of Duty for the briefest moment. "Give it here, I'll show you how it's done" he said dropping his controller. Anything that stops my son's pursuit of a Tactical Nuke in favour of finding happiness is all good in my house... Unless of course you're chasing a 'Wisdom Achievement', which I was. "Nah, it's OK son. Stick to COD for now, you can play this later".

Well done to everyone at Channel 4 Education, Something Else and Preloaded.

Games and Radio

One of the most amazing things about working at the BBC is being privileged enough to be involved in 'firsts' and this weekend's first ever Big Gaming Weekend on Radio 1 ranks highly amongst my favourites.
 
Games have become such a huge part of our audiences' lives and I've been looking at how they can fit into what we do in Audio & Music Interactive. A key thing I found is we need to know more about how to talk about gaming on-air. I'll be honest, it's not been easy. Non-gaming producers have been resistant to the idea of talking about games on-air. Their worries about isolating the non-gaming audience are to some extent understandable.

But the UK gaming community is huge and hugely popular amongst Radio 1's target audience. For me, not talking about games is like not talking about what was on TV last night or what films are on in the cinema. It's a no brainer for Radio 1.

Thankfully recent changes in gaming have allowed DJs to engage the audience in ways that wouldn't have been possible a few years ago. There's been a dramatic changes in the demographics of gamers due to the rise in casual gaming. The growth in online gaming, UGC and the rise of 'self improvement' games offer lots of opportunities.

The Big Gaming Weekend was packed with great moments. On Friday afternoon we witnessed Edith Bowman challenge Steve Coogan to a few verses of 'Knowing Me Knowing You' on SingStar. On Saturday, Vernon got on the Xbox in the Games Lounge and played what seemed like half his listeners online. On Sunday night, Annie Mac and Nick Grimshaw encouraged their audience to download the assets pack from the website and make a 'Switch' level in LittleBIGPlanet. And on Monday, Fearne Cotton brought the nation together for a version of 'Knights of Cydonia' by Muse on Guitar Hero (listeners without Guitar Hero were invited to join in on air guitar).

We ran an online poll to find the Greatest Game Ever; Radio 1 listeners voted Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare their number one. You could check the leaderboard to see how all our DJs and guests were doing in the Games Challenge, then check out the BBC's first ever games blog 'Get Your Game On' written by 1Xtra's Rampage.

The long tail of our Big Gaming Weekend was what excited me most. The weekend was a great opportunity for us to make our mark in the gaming world and reach out to non-listening game players. The ideas were fairly small scale but did allow us to drop bits of Radio 1 into the online world for players to stumble across via their consoles. We did this by introducing our DJs into the homes of many online gameplayers, creating a Radio 1 round in the game Buzz and encouraging our audience to download assets to create their own levels in LittleBIGPlanet or create machinima. All great stuff and all pulled together in less than a fortnight.

So what next for games? Well, rather then looking a head to the next Big Gaming Weekend, my big hope is that productions teams are inspired to introduce games into the everyday language of their shows. The task is no different from the one I faced when I first joined the BBC in 1996 when I had to convince our DJs to talk about the first ever Radio 1 website. "Sorry, we don't want to isolate our non web audience" came the reply.

SXSW: What We Can Learn From Games

This was one of the best sessions of the conference so far. Partly because all three men know their stuff, and secondly, they were having a real conversation. Someone on Twitter described it as like watching a jazz trio on stage such was the meandering flow of the conversation.

Experts on stage, including Henry Jenkins (MIT), James Gee (Arizona State University) and Warren Spector (Disney Interactive Studios), talked about game design, learning theories, collective intelligence, transmedia entertainment, and the value of play in a participatory culture.

Rather than trying to summarize the session I thought I'd post some of the best quotes from the panelists. Apologies for not attributing them to each speaker but my note taking is isn't the fastest.

Quotes

"Games are forcing us to depend on others for strategy and problem solving."

"What we are learning in games is to work together. Schools only recognize individual learning. Collaboration is cheating."

"Games have taught a generation that failure is not bad and collaboration is not cheating."

"The truth that dare not be spoken: Games are work. Masking the work is something games do really well."

"Games force you to think about choice and consequence in a different way."

"I wish we taught science to kids not by saying ‘memorise this stuff’ but by saying ‘model this stuff’."

"When I first started playing games, I did what boomers do, I tried same thing 300 times until my six year old said, 'Why not try something else?'"

"We can’t put games in the classroom until we change the school system dramatically."

"Games are forcing us to depend on others for strategy and problem solving."

"Games change the world like books do, by exciting our imaginations and causing us to seek out others to discuss them."

"My first bit of advice (on how to build games in social spaces) is to hire some female game designers."

"The best games think about who they are."

"A new high school in NY was designed by game designers. Classes are based on games where students collaborate."

"Until we expect responsibility for learning to be on students at school, games will be seen only as a distraction at school."

"Most successful games ask players to learn about themselves. The game lives more internally than in the platform. "

"Lost makes sure that we don't all watch the same program, despite the linear nature of TV. With Lost we change our culture to design for ourselves what is the truth behind the island."

"New games are tapping the emotional intelligence of their communities."

I"nteractive narrative is not story telling. It’s about letting you play. That way and see the consequences. It's not about telling you how the world is, it's about giving you a setting & letting you play things out. That’s how you learn."

"Games present really hard problems and suck the players in."

SXSW: Games By The People

I went in to ‘Games By The People’ expecting more on UGC and games than I got. That takes nothing away from a great talk about the growing indie scene and how close we are to delivering simple game creation tools for everyone to use.

Gareth Davis (Facebook), Steve Demeter (demiforce.com), Boyd Multerer (Microsoft), Scott Steinberg (DigitalTrends.com) and Lee Uniacke (Kongregate) made up a good panel discussing everything from the risks of creativity to the speed in which games can be ‘tweaked to perfection’ thanks to Facebook and iPhone.

Though games like Little Big Planet and Spore have introduced the idea of UGC to games the reality is that your average gamer can not create games that easily just yet. Having said that sites such as Kongregate.com (youtube for games) has released Shootorials designed to walk gamers through the process of simple game making, and Kodu Game Creator (coming this spring to Xbox) promises to produce games making tools children can master.

Here are a few quotes from the session.

Players under 11 are platform agnostic. They to play all the time. While they're watching TV they'll be playing PSP.

People create games for the same reasons people write books or make movies - to connect with an audience, tell a story, share fun.

Just like movies such as Blair Witch and Sex, Lies and Videotape broke out of the independent film scene into the mainstream the same will happen with independent gaming.

We are seeing a new rise in independent gaming. The games industry started off as individuals creating games, now it takes hundreds of people, millions of dollars and many years to make some games.

The internet means there is no constraint on who can create and publish games. A lot of our developers are students in dorm rooms or lone programmers who are able to quickly create compelling game experiences, put them on Facebook and get millions of players very quickly.

We'll probably see a game released 'Blair Witch' style in the next 5 yrs. A game that cost pennies to make but blows everything else out of the water.

Expensive does not equal good. It's about the experience. Mobile is where it's going.

Kongregate.com is the youtube of games.

All creative acts require a leap of faith. You do have to put yourself out there naked.

The fastest growing demographic for pc games is women in their 30s.

Your game will find an audience if it's any good. There is a huge longtail out there.

The Race is on for the First iPhone Number 1

I'll give it six months before we have a Number One single made entirely by iPhone apps, a challenge I'll lay at the feet of Calvin Harris. I dunno, he just seems like the man for the job. Somehow the media seem to forget his name every time they mention Dizzee's Number 1 'Dance With Me', which is a pity because he deserves credit for what was one of the best 'pop' tunes of lasty year.

In the video The Mentalists play 'Kids' by MGMT on their iPhones and iPod Touches, using Ocarina, Retro Synth, miniSynth and DigiDrummer Lite all downloaded from the apps store. They do a good job in demoing the apps but Calvin is the man that could really produce something worthy of release. He's clearly tech savvy with a commercial enough edge to make it happen. After all, he's even made trance sound interesting again with his new single so the possibilities are endless.

So, having seen the possibilities in The Mentalists video I won't get over excited if we do have a Number One using an iPhone or an iPod, but I will if I see a Number One made entirely by using Electroplankton on the DS Lite. That would be a challenge.