On Board Game Accessibility

“”Appreciation of popular cultural products facilitates the building of common conversational ground, and permits friendships to accrete around a set of shared cultural experiences. It is not however the case that all individuals have equal opportunity to participate in this process. Many cultural products, popular or otherwise, remain either physically or sociologically inaccessible to large segments of the population. ” – Michael Heron

A psychologically “embedded” approach to designing games for prosocial causes

“This paper provides an in-depth exploration of two key Embedded Design strategies: (1) intermixing: combining “on-topic” and “off-topic” game content in order to make the focal message or theme less obvious and more accessible and (2) obfuscating: using game genres or framing devices that direct players’ attention or expectations away from the game’s true aims…” – Geoff Kaufman & Mary Flanagan

Walden

“Walden, a game, is a first person simulation of the life of American philosopher Henry David Thoreau during his experiment in self-reliant living at Walden Pond. The game begins in the summer of 1845 when Thoreau moved to the Pond and built his cabin there.” – Official Game Page

Video games encourage Indigenous cultural expression

“Video games are robust forms of creative expression merging design, code, art and sound. Unfortunately, many games misrepresent or appropriate from Indigenous communities by falling back on stereotypes or including cultural content without involving Indigenous people in the development process. But done right, games have the potential to be self-determined spaces, where Indigenous people (meaning First Nations, Inuit, Métis, Native American, Maori, Aboriginal and similar communities) can express themselves on their own terms.” – Elizabeth LaPensée

Empathy, Perspective & Complicity

“Whether walking in the shoes of a Sudanese villager, helping a Tutsi mother hide with her baby during the Rwandan genocide, or managing resources in a Nepalese village to fend of starvation, video games have become powerful embodied learning tools that produce empathy, understanding, and skill acquisition, all of which support an agenda of humane conflict resolution and sustainable development.”

The Dangerous Game

“Emma Vossen’s love of gaming started when she was a kid growing up in small-town Ontario. Now as a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo Games Institute, she looks to gamer culture as a microcosm of how sexism is seeded and replicated within broader society, and she draws connections between gamer culture and the rise of the political extreme right. This is the latest in our Ideas from the Trenches series, exploring the exciting insights of PhD students across the country.” – CBC Ideas

The Pixelles Method

“There are no easy answers or shortcuts to changing a culture and increasing diversity, but we can do more than wait around and hope it happens naturally! Pixelles is a grassroots initiative founded in Montreal with the goal to increase the number of women making games, to great success thus far…Tanya, a Pixelles co-founder, will describe the steps they took to create both halves of the program, the lessons they learned, and the changes they see in gamer culture going forward.” – Tanya Short