Cultural Policy Conference and Chicago Chapter Visit 2001
by Jason Della Rocca
In late October, I headed down to Chicago for my first "academic" conference and a visit to the IGDA's Chicago chapter. While the weather was cold and freaking windy (ironically the alias "Windy City" is in reference to the city's early politicians...), the quick trip down was quite enjoyable.
In the Suburbs
First up, my visit to the Chicago Chapter. This chapter is still in its early stages, and Teresa et al are doing a great job of getting things rolling. This was the chapter's third gathering, which was basically a bunch of us crashing a 10-year Discreet anniversary party being held at Red Eye Studios. The free pizza and drinks made up for the 1+ hour/$60 cab ride out to the suburbs where Red Eye is located (damn, no one told me it was so far out).
All told, there was about 150 guests total. We were treated to an in-depth presentation by Matt of High Voltage on the animation and mo-cap techniques used in their upcoming Xbox title "Hunter: The Reckoning". Following Matt, there were some other talks on mo-cap stuff with a live demonstration. More pizza. More drinks. Some cake. And a lot of chit-chat. In the end, I hooked up with the crew from Discreet for the long ride back to town (thanks Karen and Karen!).
This is Some Serious Stuff
Ok, on to the conference. The University of Chicago's Cultural Policy Center put on the two day event titled "Playing by the Rules: The Cultural Policy Challenges of Video Games". In their words, they have "assembled scholars of policy, education, law, and the arts along with experts from the nonprofit and corporate sectors to discuss the social impact of video games and ways of encouraging innovation and development in positive social directions". Indeed, their list of panelists was quite impressive. Overall, this was an excellent conference with a lot if really stimulating discussion and debate.
Read the Papers!
In general the panels were focused on policy issues (duh!) associated to games - both in terms of proactive policy (eg, funding indie game projects in order to explore designs that are not commercially proven but that could broaden the audience for games (ie, experimental games)), and more reactive policies (eg, FTC regulation, etc). The panels covered topics ranging from games and civil society, the ever popular topic of violence, gender representations, games as an emerging art form and games as tools for learning. Sadly, I simply do not have the time to cover all the material that was presented during the conference. Luckily, most of the panelists submitted papers. I highly recommend checking out the papers.
Other Issues...
Again, this conference was time well spent and I got a lot out of it (personally and for IGDA agendas). Still, there were several "issues" I'd like to point out:
- Just about every other panelists would start their intro statement with something along the lines of "I don't play games but...". In some cases this was refreshing, where the speaker would admit to their ignorance and really try to come at things with an open mind, relating their body of knowledge (eg, philosophy, psychology, education, etc) to games. In others cases, this was simply infuriating, where the speaker would be truly ignorant, making no attempt to admit to their ignorance and then proceed to make accusations or generalizations, etc. That was not cool and demonstrated an overall lack of understanding by many of those in a position to make policy decisions and have an effect on both the development industry and our consumers.
- True, this was an academic oriented event, but the lack of any real developer presence was pretty sad. Aside from the handful of developers on panels, I can't say that there were really any other developers at the conference. It is too bad that more "practitioners" were not invited to sit on the panels, or be present to mingle with the academics at the various receptions. Moving forward it will be critical that we all work together and understand each other... This was a perfect event to start building bridges, but sadly, there were no developers on the other side... I guess it will take time for developers to truly care about some of these issues and work to get further involved.
- While the content was good and most speakers very strong, it all felt a bit wasted. There was no overt press presence to report on all the debate (and I don't mean gaming press). And, most sessions were not heavily attended (sure, it is their first time doing this). In many cases, it was as if each of the panelists had been through this all before with each other - this was especially true with the violence sessions. And, in closing the event there was no clear facility for moving forward on the issues that were raised (although I am told that they have some post-event initiatives planned).
Criticisms aside, the University of Chicago's Cultural Policy Center did an excellent job of pulling together an interesting event. And, I hope they do it again next year... In general, I believe we'll start seeing more conferences along these lines and I am looking forward to it!
Jason
Here are some shots I took during the two events (all names are from left to right):
Jesse and Kerry from High Voltage on hand to chat about Xbox dev at the Chicago Chapter soiree.
"Hunter" stairing down Matt (High Voltage). Matt gave an excellent presentation on the animation techniques and mocap for Hunter: The Reckoning.
The auditorium of the Chicago Museum of Contempory Art served as a nice venue for the first day of panels.
...not sure if it's an academic thing, but they had the largest panels I have ever seen. This was the event's first panel: Videogames and Civil Society.
Robin Hunicke (Northwestern) working the IGDA beat for the Education Committee, chats up conference organizer Larry Rothfield (University of Chicago).
J.C. Herz (Joystick Nation) and Noah Falstein (The Inspiracy) on their way to the end-of-day reception...
Lunch in the "sound tunnel": Day2's lunch was served in a piece of art at the University of Chicago. Marc Prensky (games2train.com), Tom Mitchell (UofC) and Eric Zimmerman (gameLab) in heated debate.
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