Thursday, April 6: Serious Games
Please join us at 11:00 am Nashville time on Thursday, April 6 for a Zoom discussion about Serious Games: Advancing an Unwanted Niche.
Serious games designer Alex Kreischer will introduce us to their work at Inspiratio Studio and the game-in-progress Monochrome Beauty, which productively engages players with themes of mental health and body dysmorphia in alignment with the studio’s core tenant that games can be activism, advocacy, and more. Their talk will address topics surrounding academia in games (and vice versa), mental health and games, and the transformative social potential of ludology & game design, using both my own game and those of others as examples.
From the studio’s Mission Statement:
“Inspiratio Studio’s core principles are strongly aligned with utilitarian philosophy, and share some major tenets of the effective altruism movement. Above all, we aim – given available means – to maximize our positive, societal impact. We believe that levels of effectiveness matter and that good will, as admirable as it seems, by itself is unfortunately insufficient to seek noteworthy change… Striving to combine the best of both worlds, serious games thus became the preferred tool for widening our societal impact. Given the above, we hold that rationality and emotions do not necessarily stand in juxtaposition, but ideally elevate and enhance each other. What draws people in is not (just) entertainment, but engagement. Creating this kind of engagement, by stimulating intellect & dedication is what Inspiratio Studio is all about. Traditional media never limited itself to fiction and pastime, but encompassed influential speeches, political pamphlets and scandalous documentaries. In a similar vein, we believe that today’s new mass medium should not confine itself to that subset either.”
