Nick Fortugno, Co-founder and President of Rebel Monkey
- Designed Diner Dash,
- Currently working on a MMO for Casual gamers.
- Designed Ayiti: the Cost of Life
- Teacher of Game design at Parsons
A lesson about games, Warcraft, Poker, Tag, Midnight Club, Halo, Legend of Zelda, Pac-Man Football...
What do these have in common
- All have rules
- all have goals
- All has players/agency
- and one more obvious one...Fun...or maybe not.
Is there a sense of mutual exclusivity between fun and serious issues? Many other media to to convice people of things. Works that influenced society:
- Uncle Tom's Cabin
- Telenovela
- The Jungle
- Erin Brokavihc
- Will & Grace
- Cartoons about global warming
- Eminem's song about getting out the vote
Point: If your main goal is to distribute a message, and the form is a game, then we need to recognize that games are a part of culture. If you want to send a message through a game...MAKE IT A GAME...and why not make it fun? Include sentimentalism, and action, and intrigue...
At this point there is no Uncle Tom's Cabin for games. No Citizen Caine. No Hamlet for games. There are games as awesome as these, but there are none that have shaped culture/society the way these others have.
Some examples of games that persuade:
- First an Art Game: Shadow of the colossus. It's a tragic story. Your tasked with killing colossi, because a woman you love died, and you are trying to bring her back to life. Ride out through vast wastelands of nothing until you come to a field where a colossus is. Killing the colossus is a typical boss mechanic: figure the puzzle, kill the boss. After killing the colossus, there is a melodramatic slow motion, orchestrated death. Killing the colossus is fun, however it all leads to a tragic ending. However, the fun of killing the colossus is balanced against the tragedy of the death.
- Peacemaker: The goal of the game is to make peace. The narrative is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Turn based. Program your turn, then see what happens. Gaming the approval meters of Israeli's and Palestinians. When you do something Israeli's like, the Palestinians HATE it. How do you balance these things. What you leave with is realizing how complex the issue is. The goals of the game motivate play, which demonstrates the point.
- Propaganda game: The McDonald's Game . You run McDonald's grow the cows, process the cows, sell the burgers...there are like 4 mini games, click to resolve, and the play continues. Not compelling. The game makes a statement about practices, goal is to maximize profit, while doing incredibly disgusting things (like feeding cows, other cow parts.)
- There's a long tradition of political art following popular media
- Not all games should be pop culture-games can pursue all types of effects.
- But to persuade regular players, entertainment is a good way to go.
- So serious games can and should be fun as well.
When making Ayiti, they wanted to make an educational game about conditions in Haiti, but they couldn't make it happen. However, what they could do is make a statement about poverty and how it is bad.
What motivates people in games is play.
In order get you message out, then, you need to create various games for different audiences: Gay marriage first person shooter, gay marriage MMO, gay marriage sims. Lots of laughter on the idea of first person shooter propaganda about gay marriage.
To say that fun and engagement are mutually exclusive. Think about Tag, Halo, Mario...is the fun the "same" in each game? No. Are you engaged and having fun? yes.
Little kids really really really like to learn. Then we put them in school, and they stop.
Play every game you can. Play everyone: card, board, casual...play every single one, the farther away from what you like the better. It will help you better understand how each genre works.
He was incredibly engaging.
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