Gabe Newell Keynote (NYU)

[Little.]

Gabe Newell hat sozusagen vor wenigen Minuten eine Präsentation am Games For Learning Institute's der Universität von New York gegeben. Vielleicht interessiert es ja wen, fand es durchaus lesenwert.
http://kotaku.com/5814405/liveblogging-whatever-smart-stuff-gabe-newell-has-to-say-today

Das Transkript müsste auch auf der Newsseite verfügbar bleiben, für alle Fälle hab ichs noch mal (unformatiert) in den Spoiler gepackt.

9:34


StephenTotilo:
I'm here at the NYU law school, awaiting.... Gabe Newell!
9:38


StephenTotilo:
He is keynoting the Games 4 Learning Initiative conference
9:39


StephenTotilo:
Which is a several-years-old effort of academics to support educational gaming
9:43


StephenTotilo:
It's not Gabe's time yet.
9:44


StephenTotilo:
The current speaker is talking about developing movement-based games.
9:45


StephenTotilo:
No sign of Newell in the room yet, but basically we've got a packed law school lounge
9:45


StephenTotilo:
It could be the drawing power of Gabe, the drawing power of G4LI... or the drawing power of a promised free lunch!
9:48


StephenTotilo:
We're still on the pre-Gabe speaker, discussing lots of technical stuff about learning theory and translating learning mechanics into game mechanics
9:49


StephenTotilo:
An example: for a game about learning how to solve problems, you could use an Angry Birds mechanic to fling things against a problem. Or use an implosion mechanic. Or a puzzle-solving mechanic.
9:50


StephenTotilo:
Man, this is so not the normal crowd I sit in when Gabe Newell is about to talk.
9:50


StephenTotilo:
The last Gabe talk I attended was DICE, a couple of years ago, where he talked about games as a service, offering a lot of value to customers.
9:50


StephenTotilo:
But!
9:50


StephenTotilo:
We've got a 10 minute buffer before he starts talking
9:52


StephenTotilo:
Gabe's at the podium, so at least I can confirm that he's here!
9:53


StephenTotilo:
I think he just flicked through his slides and I saw a lack of Gordon Freeman in them.
9:55


StephenTotilo:
EXCLUSIVE: The first slide has the word "opportunities" on it
9:56


StephenTotilo:
Readers, I am refraining from taking a free lunch.
9:56


StephenTotilo:
I once liveblogged the eating of a sandwich. Once was enough.
9:57


StephenTotilo:
Sorry, folks, but I meant to turn commenting off. You can comment over at Kotaku.
9:57


StephenTotilo:
Some background:
9:58


StephenTotilo:
This is the third day of the Games 4 Change conference
9:58


StephenTotilo:
The first, Monday, was mostly workshops, but was keynoted by Al Gore
9:58


StephenTotilo:
Gore mostly talked about how games had arrived and how he was enthusiastic about games being used for learning
9:59


StephenTotilo:
Pretty much the standard stuff G4C conference keynoters have been saying for the last several years (I've attended the most recent 4 or 5 of them... this is the 8th annual)
9:59


StephenTotilo:
Gore namedropped Mark Pincus (Zynga chief), Bing Gordon and gave some general advice
10:00


StephenTotilo:
Yesterday, I got to the G4C demo night, that had people showing in-development games about various social issues such as human trafficking and or learning issues like the physics of renewable energy
10:00


StephenTotilo:
But enough about that, conference chief Ken Perlin is introducing Gabe
10:00


StephenTotilo:
Cheers and claps at mention of Gabe's name
10:01


StephenTotilo:
Ken is hyping Valve's games
10:01


StephenTotilo:
Rattling off the hits
10:01


StephenTotilo:
And mentioning that Valve, under Gabe's guidance, has created a culture of letting game engine be available for mod community
10:02


StephenTotilo:
And that those mod tools have helped indie devs and educational game devs. Plus, Steam has helped distribute this stuff
10:02


StephenTotilo:
Gabe time
10:02


StephenTotilo:
Gabe isn't going to use the mic
10:02


StephenTotilo:
and he wants people to raise hands if they have questions and he'll just call on people
10:02


StephenTotilo:
Gabe is being forced to use the mic
10:03


StephenTotilo:
Gabe thinks Valve is the biggiest indie dev
10:03


StephenTotilo:
mentions Steam, 1500 titles on the service
10:03


StephenTotilo:
Games are powerful tools. Tools for education and researchers
10:03


StephenTotilo:
Thinks games will have a huge impact on the sociology of communities
10:04


StephenTotilo:
Gabe wasn't sure how many people have played Portal 2
10:04


StephenTotilo:
slide: game involves physics, spatial reasoning and problem solving
10:04


StephenTotilo:
He says it's a game about science, that it's collaborative, not competitive
10:05


StephenTotilo:
He's queuing up a trailer to give people a sense of the game
10:05


StephenTotilo:
There tends to be a distinction between games that will be successful commercially or educationally. He isn't sure he believes that
10:06


StephenTotilo:
Says Portal 2 has sold 3 million copies since launch
10:06


StephenTotilo:
So he doesn't see divide between making a game that can do well and be educational
10:06


StephenTotilo:
He's quoting the NYT write-up about Portal 2, which suggests you could read Newton or Einstein to learn about physics and play Portal 2
10:07


StephenTotilo:
This is an arrow for all of us to say we can do this, he says.
10:07


StephenTotilo:
We can make educational, commercially successful games
10:07


StephenTotilo:
He's introducing us to someone named Josh (a name on a slide, technically; Josh isn't here)
10:07


StephenTotilo:
oh... video of Josh
10:07


StephenTotilo:
2 years old
10:08


StephenTotilo:
he's using a mouse to... boot up steam and load Portal 2
10:08


StephenTotilo:
he's playing the game... a little 2 year old who can barely see over the keyboard
10:09


StephenTotilo:
This was sent to Gabe by Josh's dad, Dave
10:09


StephenTotilo:
Gabe was excited about this
10:09


StephenTotilo:
Gabe's citing Michael Abbott (Brainy Gamer blogger)'s teaching about games at Wabash College
10:09


StephenTotilo:
Games are increasingly useful as educational tools
10:10


StephenTotilo:
We always think about games as a learning experience.
10:10


StephenTotilo:
(That's how players will learn and develop skills to play the game)
10:10


StephenTotilo:
It's all self-directed
10:10


StephenTotilo:
Games are experiential, not didactic. No one is giving physics lecture in Portal 2
10:11


StephenTotilo:
"Games are about you being scaffolded to observe your own behavior"
10:11


StephenTotilo:
And games are fun
10:11


StephenTotilo:
Now he's talking about how the making of games is being used as an educational experience
10:11


StephenTotilo:
7th graders who make games are learning about math, for example.
10:11


StephenTotilo:
So a 7th-grade class went to Valve to make games
10:12


StephenTotilo:
He's showing vido of this
10:12


StephenTotilo:
video
10:12


StephenTotilo:
Phil Co of Valve is explaining how they are teaching the kids to use the software Hammer to make a test room in Portal
10:13


StephenTotilo:
Phil says the kids caught on quick.
10:14


StephenTotilo:
Teacher says this was the best field trip ever.
10:15


StephenTotilo:
She pities whoever puts on the next field trip.
10:15


StephenTotilo:
Gabe's talking again... games, games tech, and games communities have value for research
10:16


StephenTotilo:
as artificial reality systems, they're incredibly valuable to researchers...
10:16


StephenTotilo:
and now we're taking a "short detour"
10:16


StephenTotilo:
to zombies and cursing.
10:16


StephenTotilo:
If zombies and cursing offend you, now is the time to leave, Gabe says
10:16


StephenTotilo:
A guy stands up and leaves!
10:16


StephenTotilo:
to much laughter.
10:17


StephenTotilo:
We're watching a Left 4 Dead 2 trailer
10:17


StephenTotilo:
(by the way, no one has yet raised their hand to ask questions, as Gabe had invited them to)
10:18


StephenTotilo:
Gabe's talking again. Why are these synthetic actors interesting?
10:18


StephenTotilo:
He says the acting in the game is based on Paul Eckman's work on expression
10:19


StephenTotilo:
The actions and reactions on the characters' faces is procedural, based on the input of those actors
10:19


StephenTotilo:
This is a valuable tool: for example, University of Washington is using virtual actors for autism socialization
10:20


StephenTotilo:
Now he's talking about games for giving... as an example, a Japan fundraiser in Team Fortress 2
10:20


StephenTotilo:
a perk here is that if you gave (and got a hat), your act of giving was visible, which helped remind other people about the opportunity to give
10:20


StephenTotilo:
raised $500,000 in two weeks
10:20


StephenTotilo:
he doesn't think this is a one-off, because games make it easier to bring pro-social things like this to a wider audience
10:21


StephenTotilo:
games and NGOs... the Khmer Genesis Project... people using a game engine to visualize a building they needed to construct in Cambodia
10:21


StephenTotilo:
principles that help games to be a pro-social prod or scaffolding for communities
10:22


StephenTotilo:
games aren't solo, in a dark room. They are usually social
10:22


StephenTotilo:
In a social environment, it's easier to reward and sanction positive and negative behavior
10:23


StephenTotilo:
There's always a context for shared achievement... feelings you have abotu a group you achieved a goal with are substantially different from your perceptions of that group prior to, say, going on a raid to beat a boss
10:23


StephenTotilo:
games, like social networks, let you try out who you are
10:23


StephenTotilo:
this is useful for adolescents and... congressmen (laughter!)
10:24


StephenTotilo:
games also encourage grass-roots self-organization
10:24


StephenTotilo:
now we're talking economic opportunity
10:24


StephenTotilo:
He played a game on the G4C website called 3rd World Farming
10:24


StephenTotilo:
it's supposed to teach you about the plight of poor farmers in unstable countries
10:25


StephenTotilo:
a depressing game, Gabe says.
10:25


StephenTotilo:
His animals died. His farm was ruined.
10:25


StephenTotilo:
And he had to intellectualize it.
10:25


StephenTotilo:
(he just got a phone call. whoops!)
10:26


StephenTotilo:
The intellectualization for him of that game is that he was suffering from a lack of resources
10:26


StephenTotilo:
and that brings him to talking about Chinese gold farmers in WoW.
10:26


StephenTotilo:
Which is an example of people with low resources generating some.
10:26


StephenTotilo:
So Gabe decided to try to be a Gold Farmer in WoW
10:26


StephenTotilo:
He made $20/hour
10:27


StephenTotilo:
Per captia GDP in WoW is $2800 or so, he thinks.
10:27


StephenTotilo:
Which is more than it is in Laos and Nigeria
10:27


StephenTotilo:
The takeaway here is that the line between author and audience of blurry
10:28


StephenTotilo:
Game designers who try to be auteurs and think of themselves as the sole author will run into trouble.
10:28


StephenTotilo:
He cites Spore as a game that lets the players have a hand in creation.
10:28


StephenTotilo:
He's showing a player mod of TF2 that turns the game into an homage to spaghetti Westerns
10:29


StephenTotilo:
which was made by some kids with the help of their parents
10:29


StephenTotilo:
The people who play these games come into them seeing them as the beginning of a creative experience. They believe they can be the authors
10:29


StephenTotilo:
So Gabe decided to conduct an experiment...
10:29


StephenTotilo:
What if you could do high-value-add labor
10:30


StephenTotilo:
Let people replace the things that Valve built and be an army of creators
10:30


StephenTotilo:
It's terrifying, Gabe says
10:30


StephenTotilo:
Everyone out there wants to make giant penises (nervous laughter from the audience)
10:30


StephenTotilo:
But we need to stop thinking of a game as an isolated piece of content but look at it as the opening of a worldwide market for people.
10:31


StephenTotilo:
So, in TF2, the first few creators netted $40,000 in two weeks
10:31

StephenTotilo:
So, Gabe figured, why make a game to simulate the plight of the resource-drained poor farmer when you could make something that gives people the opportunity to generate their own resources
10:32

StephenTotilo:
Now we're talking about Steam and its 30 million users
10:33

StephenTotilo:
That huge audience helps Valve learn what people like, what changes they can handle, which variations they have from region to region..
10:33

StephenTotilo:
We're not smart enough to do anything without learning how the customers react
10:33

StephenTotilo:
the free Steamworks APIs help all game makers access this kind of community data and feedback
10:34

StephenTotilo:
Now he's talking about direct measurement of specific gamers
10:34

StephenTotilo:
They got excited about checking heartrates, skin conductance levels and gaze tracking
10:34

StephenTotilo:
In the future,they will look at pupil dilation, EEGs, body temp and facial expressions
10:36

StephenTotilo:
Questioner has derailed this... asking what Gabe thinks about current educational games
10:36

StephenTotilo:
Gabe thinks that most of the software isn't very good
10:37

StephenTotilo:
He hates that people who make educational games use that as an excuse that they're not working as hard as people who make commercial software
10:37

StephenTotilo:
(applause)
10:37

StephenTotilo:
Game admits that seems kind of mean
10:37

StephenTotilo:
But Gabe says, kids he knows know the geography of WoW but can't tell him where Canada is
10:37

StephenTotilo:
He thinks people who make good games should be thinking hard about what kind of educational aspects they can address; and that educational game makers need to make better games
10:38

StephenTotilo:
Back to Gabe's talk... he's excited about seeing what the game communities do
10:38

StephenTotilo:
The game community-- the technology, the design knowledge, the companies and the gamers themselves -- are tools
10:39

StephenTotilo:
He's recommending that people contact Tim Sweeney, John Carmack
10:39

StephenTotilo:
They want to hear from the education-minded people in this room
10:39

StephenTotilo:
Gabe doesn't know any game creators who wouldn't want to do things with games that would support the goals of the education-gaming in this room
10:40

StephenTotilo:
Questioner wants to know about the exodus of people from real world jobs into the virtual world
10:40

StephenTotilo:
Gabe's answer: What's a bond trader?
10:40

StephenTotilo:
this took him a while, he realized... this notion that being a biond trader or insurance salesman is more valuable than creating entertainment for other people in a virtual environment falls apart the more you look at it.
10:41

StephenTotilo:
But the questioner goes back to the agriculture example.
10:41

StephenTotilo:
A farmer who becomes a virtual farmer, he's saying, creates a void
10:41

StephenTotilo:
Gabe says he thinks that if you are giving people lower cost access to markets, you are helping them.
10:42

StephenTotilo:
If you are giving people more money... they will find things to do with. For example, they make the Hat of the Month and have several thousand dollars, they will buy things for people.
10:42

StephenTotilo:
Access to such markets leads to positive outcomes
10:42

StephenTotilo:
Questioner wants to know if there is room in a game like Portal 2 to move from the kinectics of physics to the electromagnetic side
10:42

StephenTotilo:
Oh yeah Gabe says
10:42

StephenTotilo:
Is that coming?
10:42

StephenTotilo:
We're staring to work with schools to build curricula around Portal 2
10:43

StephenTotilo:
They're looking at how to teach attraction, repulsion... they need to be clear on what their metrics are... what the outcome is, what they're optimizing for
10:43

StephenTotilo:
Question about potential for games to build characters and tell stories...
10:43

StephenTotilo:
Questioner's son was about WoW.
10:44

StephenTotilo:
He says his son found that world more epic than his real one. Says the kid said he wanted to go to college to save the world. This is the idea of the heroic imagination.
10:44

StephenTotilo:
Son got freaked out when the dad got the son in touch with an expert....
10:44

StephenTotilo:
Son said he'd rather not fail and was scared to inaction
10:45

StephenTotilo:
Questioner wants to know how that could happen, how three years of college after his son stopped playing WoW could take that out of him
10:45

StephenTotilo:
Gabe isn't sure how to answer. He dropped out of college (laughter)
10:46

StephenTotilo:
Questioner says that maybe one way to do it is to look at what the game designer learned
10:46

StephenTotilo:
Question: WHen does Half Life Episode 3 comes out?
10:46

StephenTotilo:
Gabe: if you know enough to ask the question, you know enough what the answer is
10:47

StephenTotilo:
Questioner comments on Gabe's assertion that educational game developers don't work as hard. Says they're constrained by a need to make games that help people on standardized tests
10:48

StephenTotilo:
Gabe goes hypothetical... Rob Pardo, WoW lead designer, is really good at getting people to do the same thing tons of times to make a marginal improvement
10:48

StephenTotilo:
Gabe says Rob could be asked to give a goal to get a player to do well on a standardized test. Any game designer could do that, Gabe says, but they would want to know why to do that...
10:49

StephenTotilo:
A person who leads a 40-person raid is learning a huge amount.... but things that there aren't, say, standardized tests for.
10:49

StephenTotilo:
Questioner: Portal taught us really well that it trains people.
10:49

StephenTotilo:
So is it possible to use that training in how to teach people, from Portal, to teach people skills? How would you market that toward educators.
10:50

StephenTotilo:
Gabe: THe key is to look at what makes for great educational experiences: room for experimentaiton, self-monitoring, self-direction. Those are also hallmarks of great games.
10:50

StephenTotilo:
People like to learn, he says. People like to get the recognition of their peers
10:50

StephenTotilo:
Last question: is your company to develop capacity for poor people to make games in poor country
10:51

StephenTotilo:
Gabe: people don't realize how many people in the world play games.
10:51

StephenTotilo:
10 million people in China play Defense of the Ancients, he says
10:51

StephenTotilo:
Intel is driving down the costs fast
10:51

StephenTotilo:
Tech based on Moore's Law is getting the costs down
10:51

StephenTotilo:
People underestimate how fast this is all spreading.
10:51

StephenTotilo:
And that's that, folks. Loud applause.
10:52

StephenTotilo:
Thanks for following our Kotaku liveblog.

 

[Lunak]

Ähm worum gehts hier nochmal?

 

[Little.]

Ähm worum gehts hier nochmal?

Worauf bezieht sich das?
Falls auf die verwendete Sektion:
(Wenn nicht alles ab hier ignorieren und erläutern )


Forum
Gametalk
Sonstige Games

Inhalt der Keynote "Games for educational purposes"

Und da das Off-Topic die Unterschrift
"Allgemeine Themen, Ereignisse und Nachrichten, die in keines der vorhandenen Foren passen."
und auch weder Real-Life, noch Multimedia oder Technick ist finde ich das hier sehr gut aufgehoben.
Man möge mich korrigieren.

 

[Lunak]

Ne ich meinte die News an sich, nach 16000 Posts weis ich sehr wohl in welchem Forum wir uns befinden...

 

[Little.]

Kann man ja nie wissen Denn eigentlich steht alles dazu in #1

Es geht darum das Gabe Newell eine Keynote ("Präsentation") gegenüber Leuten gegeben hat die sich mit der Entwicklung von Lernsoftware bzw Serious Games beschäftigen und da ein wenig seine Meinung/Erfahrung auf dem Gebiet kundgetan sowie einen kleinen Einblick in die "Philosophie" von Valve gegeben hat. Noch ausführlicher kann ichs echt nicht zusammenfassen. Selbst im Link steht nicht mehr, denn mehr isses nicht.

Wers halt interessier ist der liest sich das Transkript durch. Oder wartet bis sich irgeneine Newsseite dem vielleicht annimmt.

 

[Lunak]

Ah jetzt wird ein Schuh draus, danke

 

[Psycho Joker]

Sehr interessant. Erinnert mich an die eine Epidode von "Extra Credits" ( http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/3167-Gamifying-Education ).