Pre-launch trip to Washington

Jonathan Aronson and I went to Washington DC this week and met with reporters, redistricting advocacy groups, Rep Zoe Lofgren's office, and Rep John Tanner and his staff. Lofgren and Tanner both have redistricting reform bills before congress. We model Tanner's bill, H.R. 543, in the game.

This trip was taken in prep for the launch of the game next month. Here are some pics from the trip:

Randy Ford (Tanner's press secretary), me, Carling Dinkler (Tanner's Legislative Assistant who put together HR 543), and Jonathan Aronson (Exec Director of the Annenberg Center) in Rep Tanner's office. We brainstormed after the meeting and came up with the idea of launching the game out of the U.S. Capitol building along with democrats and republican reps. This is an exciting idea and we are going to do it.


This is a picture of Tom Mann from the Brookings Institute and Gerry Hebert, Exec Director of the Campaign Legal Center. These are two of the leading thinkers about redistricting and redistricting reform. I invited Gerry to speak at our launch event at the Capitol building and he agreed to do it.

The most interesting thing about the trip was how receptive everyone was to the idea of a game about redistricting. I was expecting a lot of skepticism and tough criticism - considering that these are really the leading thinkers about redistricting reform - however people were not critical but rather excited that a game was coming out about the issue. The only person during the trip that offered real criticism was Prof Bruce Cain from UC Berkeley (but based in DC) who took issue with the way the reform mission was presented. He thinks it's too preachy and doesn't show how independent commissions work accurately. He offered some good suggestions which we will go back and implement.

Another interesting thing that I learned is that USC has a great office in Washington DC - right by the Navy Memorial. Jennifer Grodsky is the exec director. She got us the meetings with the congresspeople and has been terrific fun to hang out with the whole week.

lectures at Columbia and Carnegie Mellon

This week I gave invited lectures about game design - including The Redistricting Game - at Columbia U and Carnegie Mellon. Both talks were well attended. In fact about 200 people came to the Carnegie Mellon talk. Once again the interest level in this game exceeds my expectations.

Presented at Serious Games Summit in DC

Presented an early version of the game at the Serious Games Summit in Washington DC. Slides here. Lots of people attended the talk which was nice. I met and had lunch with Prof. James Gee from University of Wisconsin-Madison afterwards. He was walking around with my friend Eric Zimmerman. This was great because I am a fan of Gee's work - especially "What Videogames Have to Teach Us About Literacy and Learning". I didn't realize that he had a position at USC before Wisconsin. Too bad he's not still at USC. I was quoted in this article in USA Today afterwards which was nice.

Presented at the Annenberg Speakers Series

Doug Thomas and I gave a lecture at the Annenberg Center about the game. I was pleased to be invited to this because they present real thought leaders at the series and the audience is usually professors and researchers and they tend to engage the speakers. Good stuff. Video of the 45 minute presentation is posted on this page (scroll down).

Mentioned in NY Times...

Even though the game is only early development we were mentioned in a NY Times article called "Saving the World One Videogame at a Time". This project really sparks people's interest - probably more than any project I've ever done. Another good sign...

Early Prototype

Here is a photo of the first prototype for the game. The board is a fictitious US state. Each square on the board is a census block with a population number, % democrat, and % republican. The different colored stickers represent different congressional districts. So there are five districts in this state. The game moves forward by changing colors on the census blocks (just like in real redistricting). Each time you change a color you change the demographic numbers for the districts affected. Game state numbers are being tracked by Greg, the grad student, using an Excel spreadsheet on the laptop in the background.

The first time we played this game the team got into an intense debate. People started arguing about the meaning of representative democracy. People were googling the Constitution. One of the designers sighed that "maybe my old boyfriend was right, your vote really doesn't matter", etc. After two hours of playing and debating I said "Guys lets stop playing and get back to work." But they wouldn't stop playing. In the rare times when I see a prototype that playtesters are so engaged in that they refuse to stop playing I know we are onto something special.