A Newspaper Called Video Games ‘Murder Simulators.’ 1 Million Kids in Hospitals Might Disagree

In pediatric hospitals, incessant beeping and harsh fluorescent lights are often inescapable.
But in some of these hospitals, video games are helping to create a more hospitable (and fun) healing environment for the children who are staying there. 
The nonprofit was founded in 2003 by authors of the online comic strip Penny Arcade as a response to an article comparing video games to “murder simulators.” Since its launch, the nonprofit has provided over 180 hospitals with video games.
Donations can be made in one of two ways: By clicking on a hospital via a wishlist on its online network and sending a gift, or by sending cash donations. 
To learn more about how Child’s Play helps children, watch the above video. 
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For These Students, Gaming Isn’t a Way to Kill Time. It’s a Way to Success

It’s late one night when two teenagers — one an aloof perfectionist; the other, a troubled target of bullying — find themselves inhabiting the same strange dream. Though they’ve never met, the strangers share a heartbreaking connection: the recent death of a mutual friend. In their shared lucid dream, they walk under an indigo sky, trying to figure out where to go next while simultaneously coping with feelings of anger, sadness and fear after the loss of their friend. Soon, the teens encounter a giant lantern. It surges toward them, chasing them down a hallway and through a door.
It’s a nocturnal sequence that seems straight out of a mind-bending Charlie Kaufman movie. But the creator of this inventive world isn’t an established filmmaker; she’s Rebecca Taylor, herself a teenager living in the Bay Area. And the premise isn’t the plot of a blockbuster; it’s the basis for a video game about the stages of grief, called “Lucid,” that she’s helping develop. A high school senior, Taylor spends most weekends writing code with other young designers, storytellers and programmers at Gameheads, an Oakland-based nonprofit dedicated to training underserved youth the foundations of video-game design.
The yearlong curriculum, targeted to those between the ages of 15 and 24, seeks to open Silicon Valley’s enormous possibilities to low-income communities just across the San Francisco Bay, says Damon Packwood, the executive director of Gameheads. “The ubiquity of computing is akin to the printing press — it changes us culturally and permanently,” he says. “But if you have just one group of people that is part of that change, it doesn’t benefit us all.”
Packwood stumbled upon the model for Gameheads while he was teaching a web design class at another organization. To get his students interested in the subject matter, he suggested designing a website around gaming. But the students wanted to cut to the chase and learn how to build games themselves. “It’s a language they already understand,” Packwood says of the young people he mentors. Interactive storytelling, he adds, “is the medium of the 21st century.” By switching the focus of his class to video-game design, he found it was much easier to get kids excited about technology.
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That unique focus makes Gameheads, which currently serves about 60 students, the only tech boot camp of its kind in the Bay Area. While most other programs prioritize software development, an in-demand skill set to be sure, Packwood believes putting all the emphasis on what’s job-worthy is misplaced. Gameheads, on the other hand, is open to a wider range of roles, welcoming animators and sound engineers alongside programmers.
Since most of the Gameheads attendees are still in high school, Packwood says his main goal is seeing his students go to college. He has helped Taylor and the other students apply for financial aid, draft college essays and figure out where to enroll. (For her part, Taylor is readying applications to several schools in the University of California system and plans to study computer science once there.) And after they obtain their degree, about half of the grads consider joining the industry — a possibility many hadn’t considered before their time in Gameheads.
Taylor once suspected that because she didn’t have an “in,” she wouldn’t ever be considered as a serious job candidate by game studios. (One look at classic cult movies like “WarGames,” “Tron” and “The Last Starfighter” reveals why: White men predominate in the popular imagery of who creates electronic entertainment.) “I didn’t think it was possible,” says Taylor. But after working with Packwood and other mentors, who come from Sledgehammer, Ubisoft and other studios, her views changed. “I don’t really see it as much of a daunting task, only because a lot of my mentors are actually people of color who work in the game industry,” she says. “It seems very possible now.”
Just as Packwood had hoped — and predicted — the games being crafted by such a diverse population of young people defy genre. Teens like Taylor, whose gaming interests aren’t necessarily represented on Best Buy’s shelves, are more interested in playing “Life Is Strange,” an adventure about a high school girl who can rewind time, than first-person shooter games. “I think the industry has had enough of ‘Halo’ and ‘Call of Duty.’ They need something fresh and original, something that’s meaningful,” she says.
Taylor hopes “Lucid” is that type of game. By design, it necessitates two characters, so that one person can’t play it alone. The two players have to work through the grieving process together, like an interactive therapy. (When Packwood first heard the premise, he asked who gave the group the idea; it came from their own experiences, they told him.) “When I see friends of mine that are going through grief, they shut themselves out of the world. So why not have people try to get over it together?” Taylor asks. “I want people to know that games are more than just something you do when you’re bored. Games actually have the potential to save a life, maybe.”
Like Packwood and his cohort know, most successful game developers are the ones who can build new worlds. At Gameheads, he’s helping his students do just that: They’re carving out a space, both on their computers and in Silicon Valley.

Homepage photo of Gameheads participants courtesy of TJ Ransom

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This article is part of the What’s Possible series produced by NationSwell and Comcast NBCUniversal, which shines a light on changemakers who are creating opportunities to help people and communities thrive in a 21st-century world. These social entrepreneurs and their future-forward ideas represent what’s possible when people come together to create solutions that connect, educate and empower others and move America forward.
 
 

The Power of Video Games to Heal America’s Heroes, A Surefire Way to Keep Students in School and More


How Games Are Helping Veterans Recover from Injury, Polygon
U.S. Army Major Erik Johnson discovered the healing power of video games firsthand while recovering from a horrible car accident. Today, the occupational therapist serves as Chief Medical Officer for Operation Supply Drop, a nonprofit that taps the therapeutic benefits of technology to help veterans and active service members recover from physical injuries, mental struggles, memory and cognitive problems and more. Sure, it’s unconventional to put a Nintendo Wii controller in a soldier’s hand during therapy, but the results are undeniable: reestablishing “themselves as an able body person who can enjoy things they used to enjoy.”
What Can Stop Kids From Dropping Out? New York Times
The massive amount of outstanding student loan debt might not be the biggest problem when it comes to higher education. What is? The fact that almost half of college freshmen fail to earn a bachelor’s degree within six years. Dropout rates are highest amongst minorities, first-generation undergrads and low-income individuals, but through advisory sessions at the first sign of trouble, classes that offer immediate feedback, tiny grants of just a few hundred dollars and more, George State University is helping these traditionally poor-performing students achieve higher graduation rates than their white peers.
The Bag Bill, The New Yorker
A self-described child of hippie parents, Jennie Romer fondly recalls visiting the local recycling facility with her parents. The weekly trips clearly had an impact on Romer, who’s spent much of her adulthood fighting for plastic bag bans. Success has been plentiful in California, with San Francisco, San Jose and Los Angeles all passing ordinances against the notorious environmental menace. Now Romer has her sights set on implementing a fee on plastic bags in the country’s largest metropolis. Will she add the Big Apple to her list of triumphs?
Editors’ note: Since the publication of the New Yorker article, the New York City Council has approved a 5-cent fee on plastic bags. 
MORE: The High-Energy Activity That’s Healing the Invisible Scars of War

Inside the Push for Equality in the Gaming Industry

Add gaming to the list of male-dominated industries. Despite the exploding popularity of this medium across demographics — according to a Pew Internet and American Life Project and Mills College survey, 97 percent of American teens aged 12 to 17 play video games at least two hours a week — women make up only 13 percent of the employees in the gaming industry. And that includes business positions, not just creative jobs like the coveted role of video game designer. Additionally, women in this industry are paid an average of 25 percent less than men. What gives?

According to Dr. Mary Flanagan, an award-winning game designer, researcher,and professor at Dartmouth College, the underlying problem is that the industry still exudes “a culture of virtual guns, babes and ammo … and spoils what could otherwise be a revolutionary design space for new kinds of thinking, learning and collaboration, if only the industry would diversify.” In short, she writes in Gamasutra (the online version of Game Developer Magazine), the gender disparity is the last thing that the industry wants to “deal with.” She writes, “No one wants to ask development teams to self- censor. What if that hurts creativity? Why deal with this at all? Wouldn’t it be easier to just avoid women altogether?”

MORE: When Nobody in Technology Looked Like Her, This Woman Did Something About It

But Flanagan argues that this issue should be “dealt with,” for the betterment of the industry. Not only is it proven that women can design great video games (and other games as well), but in general, Flanagan argues, the industry would benefit from teams that include a variety of opinions and ideas from different demographics.

In fact, gaming was arguably created by a woman, Anne W. Abbott, who designed the first board game published in the U.S. in 1843. Other iconic American games, such as Jenga, Monopoly, Portal, and Centipede, were also created by women. And the Alien Game project has proven that games that are created by women have a broader appeal across genders, which equals greater sales and profits for businesses.

Flanagan is pushing to revolutionize the gaming industry by making it gender equal by 2020. To do that, she says that women in the industry need to speak up and make their presence known. She recommends that these women visit schools or host a panel at a gaming conference to prove to young women and girls that they, too, can become game designers. But the men can also help, by pushing for equality on industry panels and in the workplace. After all, diversity is good for business. “If we add more diverse voices to the video game industry, we will create vastly different games that reflect a diversity of thought and social values,” Flanagan writes. “Bring us different games, those that inspire, teach, entertain and open minds.” And bring in the women.

ALSO: Give Video Games a Chance to Help Kids Develop Positive Traits

Why Minecraft is the Learning Tool of the Future

Minecraft is a game that allows students to complete adventures, build worlds, talk to their friends and learn about digital citizenship. And while schools don’t usually have trouble getting kids interested in video games, they are finding it challenging to teach students about internet ethics and online safety at an early-enough age. But Minecraft is a great tool to teach digital citizenship, and enables students to learn about communication, collaboration and critical thinking. Check out this video to learn about the game and how teachers are using it.

Give Video Games a Chance to Help Kids Develop Positive Traits

While violent video games draw a lot of criticism, scrutiny, and blame for harmful effects on kids who play them excessively, some modern video game developers are finding ways to engage kids and help them develop positive personality traits. Trip Hawkins, who founded Electronic Arts, is working to get beyond the typical game and his company’s best known brand, EA Sports. He wants to transform gaming platforms into teaching tools. Using the company’s wealth of data, research, and experience in developing highly-engaging games, Electronic Arts created a game called If, in which players visit an imaginary village, populated by cats and dogs who don’t get along. The progressive difficulty of the game creates an opportunity to learn empathy and solve challenges of interpersonal relationships. If EA can master the art of making this learning process fun for kids, it could change the value and benefits of playing video games.