Meaningful Play

I just came back a week ago from my lecture presentation at the Meaningful Play Conference 2008 in Lansing, Michigan.

Together with the Serious Games movement, Games for Health, Games+Learning+Society, Games for Change, Games for Health and other socially responsible, proactive, and integrative initiatives, the Meaningful Play conference is an example of an emergent "wave" within the video game industry and academy that certainly came to stay (and grow!).

These movements have been gradualy shaking up the video game community and industry by bringing timely and significant awareness and discussions about the emerging role of meaningful messages and practices through a new generation of alternative or "trans-entertaining" video games in our culture and society.

Here is an introduction extracted from the Meaningful Play 2008 conference website:

Whether designed to entertain or for more “serious” purposes, games have the potential to impact players’ beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, emotions, cognitive abilities, and behavior.
 

Meaningful Play 2008 is an interdisciplinary academic conference that explores the potential of games to entertain, inform, educate, and persuade in meaningful ways. The conference includes thought-provoking keynotes from leaders in academia and industry, peer-reviewed paper presentations, panel sessions (including academic and industry discussions), innovative workshops, roundtable discussions, and exhibitions of games.
 

Submissions are sought from both researchers and practitioners in academia and industry. Graduate and advanced undergraduate students are also encouraged to submit either jointly with an academic/member of industry or alone.

While any topic related to games for entertainment and learning is appropriate to submit to Meaningful Play 2008, topics of particular interest include:
 

1) Exploring meaningful applications of games
 

* Games to stimulate creativity or innovation

* Games to build social skills

* Games to advertise (advergames) and persuade

* Games to exercise specific cognitive functions

* Games to explore personal beliefs and help make decisions

* Games to build knowledge and skills (games for learning)

* Serious games for history and cultural heritage learning
 

2) Issues in designing meaningful play
 

* Game design for specific audience segments

* Player types and play styles

* Story and storytelling in games

* Competitve and cooperative play (single player, multiplayer and massively multiplayer)

* Balancing entertainment and serious goals

* Repurposing entertainment games for serious purposes

* Unintended and unexpected effects of games

* Using psychology and neuroscience to design and understand games

* Evaluation and assessment of game impacts

Barriers to the adoption of serious game

 

 

> You can download my paper from the conference website at http://meaningfulplay.msu.edu/program.php?presentation=18&type=paper and a series of interesting papers from other presenters (divided by sections) at http://meaningfulplay.msu.edu

> The Powerpoint presentation used in my lecture can be downloaded at: http://www.pressplaytogrow.com/2401/3943.html


Best wishes,
Moses Silbiger, M.A.

www.pressplaytogrow.com

www.integraleye.com