lead story on Gamasutra.com

Today the game was featured in the lead story on Gamasutra.com (read it here). Gamasutra.com is the leading online community and news source in the game industry. So it's a big deal to be the lead story.

One interesting thing in the story is the point about how serious games have much lower budgets than commercial games and thus are not as polished. The author, Bryan Ochalla, cited me as agreeing with that (which I do in general) but he didn't include my comments that serious games also provide more creative freedom for the game makers. Here's the full text of what I sent to Ochalla about this:
I want to design play systems that create meaningful and dramatic experiences. I transitioned from industry to academia because I wanted creative freedom to pursue ideas without being governed by a publisher and without the design constraints that come along with having to sell lots of units. There are pros and cons to designing in an academic environment. The pros are: broader set of problems to pursue and much more creative freedom / flexibility once you secure funding for a problem. The cons are: production budgets are smaller and you have less access to experienced talent. Right now there is tremendous opportunity and so many interesting problems to pursue. And we are finding (and growing) more and more talented developers who want to work in this environment.

on CNN!

Back in LA. Today CNN came to the USC Game Innovation Lab and interviewed me about the game. The correspondent, Kara Finnstrom was really sharp and produced a great piece. You can watch the full video here.

I have been getting emails from the parents of my friends on this one. Ha!

This is a picture of Finnstrom interviewing me on campus.

The blogosphere speaks...

I am pleased to see the digerati set writing positively about the game online. I haven't seen any real trash jobs on the game which is normal on blogs. Some of the prominent sites from the blogosphere that have been writing about the game include: Kotaku (game culture), Slashdot (technology). Getting on these two is huge. Also we have received over 600 diggs on Digg.com!

I posted a full list of the places the game appears online here.

It is especially interesting to read the user comments. There are hundreds on Slashdot right now. Here are a few pull quotes from user comments from around the web:

· It's great to see games being used as a serious medium for communication and political reform. The game itself was entertaining enough to keep me engaged, and highly illuminating to boot. I was surprised to see how easy it is to 'cheat' (abuse power) to determine the outcome of an election! Even so, the game has an optimistic outlook, showing (in level 5) how reform like the Tanner Bill can help the problem. Well done, USC!

· A good game has a well defined difficulty curve. What I found really interesting about this one is that the final stage is a hypothetical environment where redistricting reform is implemented and you're forced to define zones of near-equal population without any information provided for race or party affiliation. That "final environment" is impossible to complete while keeping all the incumbents in their seats. Which is the whole point, AFAIK, one I wholeheartedly agree with.

· That intro is fairly awesome... How can an animation of a map turning into a dinosaur and eating people not be the coolest thing? I want to get this redistricting game! When does it come out for the Wii? Also a plus of that introduction is the dramatic voice that accompanies that quote.

· This game is on the right track, explaining a complex concept to people in an easy to understand way is a great thing.

· It's nice to see a game that makes a serious statement about a political topic and doesn't suck! I hope the whole serious games industry is getting ready to be taken as valid social commentary.. and not just 'beat up bin laden' type of crap. I think eventually we will all be playing games like this the same way we watch documentaries or read non-fiction... as long as titles like this that actually have some polish continue to be released.

· As a huge political nerd, I found this game wildly entertaining

· It is entertaining. Great for teaching government in school.

· I shouldn't enjoy making a mockery of democracy this much... but I do.

· I hate you. Okay, okay, I love you. But all my co-workers probably hate you since I can’t finish the last level and I can’t get anything ELSE done until I finish the last level.

· This may fill the void for me when the WoW servers are down. =P That said, a wicked creative way to get people involved.

· Really dorkily fun!

Extended list of pull quotes here.

Press coming in strong...

Press is coming in strong now that the game is officially launched. Also we are getting tremendous traffic on the site. My email inbox is filling up with people wanting to talk about the game. Woo hoo!

Over 100 articles have appeared about the game. Some of the good ones include: NY Times Online, NPR, Wired Online, USA Today Online, National Journal, Roll Call, Chronicle of Higher Education, Toronto Globe and Mail, and PC World.

Matt Peckham from PC World was particlularly glowing. He said:
“What a fascinating experiment, and what an inspired idea for a teaching tool that marries the accessibility of a casual game with sophisticated and politically relevant strategics. Imagine this sort of thing deployed in an American Government or Civics classroom. Between all the recent sound and fury over "killer games" and legislated ratings, it's refreshing to see the seeds of the medium's real potential as a vehicle for heightened cultural discourse quickening. Wherever you fall on the issue--and the game is careful not to take sides, or rather, to let you--I can't recommend The Redistricting Game highly enough.”

I pulled a bunch of good quotes from various sources and assembled here (see this link also in the right margin of this blog).

Event at the Capitol Building

This week has been a blur of activity. Today we launched the game out of the Capitol Building. Rep Tanner hosted us. We dressed the room with posters related to the game. Four people spoke: Rep Tanner, me, John Anderson (the former presidential candidate who is now Chair of FairVote.org), and Gerry Hebert (exec director of The Campaign Legal Center). After the speeches we were interviewed by various members of the press including the NY Times, Roll Call, and NPR.

Here are some pictures from the event:

Speeches - This picture gives a sense of how the room was dressed. Big posters + laptops running the game. Press and guests in the audience.

Interviews - this pic gives a sense of the atmosphere after the speeches. In this picture Tanner is talking about the game while one of his interns plays and I look on.

Writer/Designer Jeremy Bernstein jokes around with Andrea Seabrook from NPR. He did a great job in the interview and was quoted in the piece she produced (listen to the NPR piece here).
Wrap - here is the team with Rep. Tanner and John Anderson. From left to right: Rep John Tanner, Peggy Weil, me, John Anderson, Jeremy Bernstein, Duane Dunfield. Tanner really impressed me with how welcome he made everyone feel and how articulate and sincere he is about the issue of redistricting reform. Also it was a treat meeting John Anderson whom my dad voted for for president in 1980. I told him that and he said "always grateful for the support."

The event was a big success. Thanks to John Zollinger from USC for producing the event and getting all the people there.

Presented at the Games for Change Festival

I flew to NY yesterday to present the game at the Games for Change festival. We are excited to be here. Five people from the team made the trip, me, Duane Dunfield, Peggy Weil, Jeremy Bernstein, and Doug Thomas. We demo'd for the press during a press event Monday night. Bob Kerrey, president of New School University (which was the venue) gave a hilarious speech about the power of games and the internet.


Here is the banner that we used during the press event:




Here is a picture of me on a panel at the festival with Tracy Fullerton and Ian Bogost. The title of the panel was "A Moment of Crisis! Case Studies from the Trenches ".


The idea was to talk about design crises that happen during game productions and give case studies of how you solved them. I haven't seen a panel like this before and thought it was an astute concept because every game goes through design crises. It is good to acknowledge that fact and share info with fellow designers. I like to share this fact with my students so they don't feel like failures when it happens to them. I had a good time putting together the slides for this talk (full slides here).

Great article in the Washington Post - too bad I wasn't quoted

A great article appeared in the Washington Post today. Aronson and I spent a lot of time with Mike Musgrove at the Washington Post during our trip to DC last month. Musgrove showed us around the news room at the Post and we walked by Bob Woodward's office (he wasn't in it). I was surprised to find out that all reporters are on one open floor - the same setting as in All the President's Men. We met in the little conference room where they decide on the editorial for the paper and there were framed prints from the Nixon/Watergate issues from 1973. The piece that Musgrove wrote is excellent though I was disappointed to not be quoted.

This will hopefully be the first of many articles about the game.

Game Launches!

We all put in a superhuman effort these past few weeks to squeeze out remaining bugs in the game and website and officially launch on Sunday June 13. Duane, Chris, and Andrew at Red Hot Learning in particular did crack work as usual. RHL is world class. We put out media alerts last week announcing that we will be at Games for Change festival and at the Capitol Building. The idea was to get lots of press to show up at these two events and then write stories to coincide with the official launch. However lots of outlets just ran the media alert like a press release. This meant that articles were appearing before the official launch and traffic on the site started spiking - even though the game wasn't live (ugh). I called Duane in a panic and told him to "launch the site!". He smartly deflected that nonsense and suggested that we point visitors to our (previously private) Beta version of the game until the real site was ready.

It's exciting to see press come in in any case. I was interested to see that lots of local television stations were covering the launch during their broadcasts - places like Arkansas, Alabama, etc.