DARTMOUTH AT PLAY
FRIDAY MAY 17
Loew Auditorium 2 – 5 PM
GABRIEL SCHLUMBERGER DISNEY · MIKE MEARLS WIZARDS OF THE COAST · CATE GARY BLIZZARD ENT. · REGINA GLOCKER PRESIDENTIAL GAME · JUSTIN KRETER HASBRO INC · LINDEN VONGSATHORN MICROSOFT

Tiltfactor is pleased to announce our second annual Dartmouth at Play event!

Dartmouth at Play showcases Dartmouth’s representation in the gaming industry to campus. Some of the most respected games and toys of the 20th and 21st century have been created by Dartmouth graduates. What’s more, there are alumni in leadership roles among scores of prominent toy and digital game companies (Hasbro, Sony, Popcap, Zynga), as well as the entrepreneurial alums who are venturing out to start their own new brands. Did you ever want insight into how games are changing culture? What goes into making a great game? What new business models are being pioneered in the games industries?

Dartmouth at Play celebrates these graduates, bringing folks active in the gaming industry back to campus in order to discuss the future of play.

We have a great lineup this year:

Gabriel Schlumberger is Director of Digital Creative for Disney Publishing Worldwide, leading the creation of apps such as Wreck-It Ralph, Monsters University, and Minnie’s Bowtique.  Previously he worked at Pixar and Blue Sky studios.

Mike Mearls is an award-winning tabletop game designer. He is currently the head of Dungeons & Dragons R&D for Wizards of the Coast.

Cate Gary graduated from Dartmouth in 2002. In 2008, she joined Blizzard Entertainment’s Creative Development team.

Regina Glocker and her partners, Russ and Chris Patrick, invented and produced The Presidential – the most powerful game in the world – in 2012. Regina has spent over 15 years in this industry with several different firms including Korn/Ferry, Westwood Partners and Sextant Search.

Justin Kreter is the Director of Global Strategy and Marketing for the Preschool Gaming division of Hasbro, Inc. He joined the global branded play company immediately following graduation from the Amos Tuck Business School in 2003.

Linden Vongsathorn is a Software Development Engineer at Soho Productions, Microsoft Studio’s London-based Xbox TV team. She graduated from Dartmouth in 2010 with a BA in Computer Science and a Minor in English Literature, and was a part of Tiltfactor during its first years at Dartmouth.

We hope to see you Friday to kick off the fun and games of Green Key weekend!
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This is a catered event. Sponsored by The Digital Humanities. Hosted by Dr. Mary Flanagan, Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor in the Emerging Field of Digital Humanities.

Geoff introduced our work by discussing the goals of our lab and the theories behind our BIAS research. We then talked about our games Awkward Moment and buffalo and played a few rounds of each game with the audience. The attendees were receptive of our games and eagerly joined in to play! Geoff finished our discussion by presenting data to show that our games can help players think of themselves and others in ways that reduce the effects of implicit bias. The audience seemed particularly interested that we presented evidence of some transformation in players’ thinking – we love evidence-based research, too! We had a wonderful and engaged audience and thank them for attending our session and for their thoughtful questions about our work.

In addition to Tiltfactor research, presenters in our session discussed topics such as art and social justice, aesthetic reading and inquiry, and the use of comics as a medium to unite visual and verbal information. We enjoyed learning about the unique ways in which scholars use various forms of media for skill-building and inquiry. As our discussant noted, the papers varied widely in many ways, but presenters shared an openness to exploring education and related issues through novel media.

Along with presenting our research, Geoff and I also attended other paper sessions and lectures – many of which involved games in some way. For example, we attended a discussion by James Paul Gee, Henry Jenkins, S. Craig Watkins, and Constance Yowell about the realities of leveraging social media and games in learning environments, especially for students from underresourced backgrounds. We also went to a session about augmented reality, mobile devices, and learning by Kurt Squire, Christopher Dede, Eric Klopfer, and others. Before returning to Dartmouth, I attended sessions about the STEM pipeline and about academic identities. I particularly enjoyed a paper about multiple stereotype threat, working memory, and math performance – not only because the authors were from Dartmouth, but also because the work is so applicable to our work at Tiltfactor!

As an undergraduate intern, I feel quite fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend AERA and to learn from and meet prominent scholars in the field of education research. The presentations that I attended reinforced my belief that the research we do at Tiltfactor and game research in general can measurably impact disadvantaged populations. In addition, I thoroughly enjoyed introducing educators and researchers to our games and learning how to adapt the games to the conference setting. We encourage both the attendees who have the games as well as our other friends near and far to tweet us or comment here on our blog with your thoughts about our BIAS games!

Tomorrow (Thursday, May 9th) from 7pm to 10pm in the Black Family Visual Arts Center will be the Digital Arts Exhibition with interactive installations, games to play, and student artwork! There will be food from Salt Hill Pub. There will be a student animation showing at 7:30pm and student live action showing at 9:00pm.

In addition, in the Playcube outside of the BFVAC by the spider, will be the debut of the World’s Tiniest Orchestra! Starting at Noon.

It’s going to be tons of fun and everyone should come to check out the events!

The Exhibition, World’s Tiniest Orchestra and the FAB Lab are all free and open to the public!

Painted by Alannah Linkhorn and Sayeh Gorjifard

More on that soon as folks at the lab digest the possibilities for GDC. Finally, Celia Pearce’s keynote was a real treat, as she outlined the #1reasonwhy phenomenon and discussed trends over the last 30 years in the industry.

There is much to say about the projects, processes, and people I met and saw, but I’ll show here a few snaps I took of people playing Tiltfactor games and suggest you read  Leigh Alexander’s astute Gamasutra piece on our work with values in design and values at play. She really understands our goals.

YAY!

Here, players are debating a particularly tricky buffalo combination in the Games Arcade!

The conference organizers set up POX: Save the People in the lobby so folks could play the game in spare moments!

Thanks to our players! We make our games for you, and are grateful for your enthusiasm!

Mary meanwhile is excited to be keynoting the new and awesome “Different Games,” a two day conference on diversity and inclusion in digital games at NYU in NYC on April 26th 2013. WHOO HOO!

Our team was assigned with the task of creating a mobile, multiplayer metadata collection game that incorporates elements of fast paced competition and “one upping” your competitor. The catch is that we had to turn what worked as a competitive synchronous game into an asynchronous game. How would we enable players to form an exciting attachment to the game and be competitive with each other as each player interacted with the game over varying time spans? What would make players come back and play another round?