Technology has the power to transform human behavior, shift culture, and shape institutions. Video games are an increasingly important medium, with global relevance and wide-ranging cultural influence. Our ambition is to harness the power of video games in the service of humanistic principles, or human values, knowing that this emerging art form holds tremendous potential to educate and inspire.

The “Values at Play” (VAP) research project assists and encourages designers to be mindful of what values their computer games promote. We would like to see a diversification of video game values to include positive principles like equity, creativity, diversity, and negotiation, along with the traditional tropes of violence and machismo. Many designers have already begun work in this area by creating “activist games” that teach and inspire social activism, empathy, and other values. With support from the National Science Foundation and a diverse advisory board of game designers and academics, VAP is positioned to become an important force in this movement.


RESEARCH TEAM
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS
Dr. Mary Flanagan is an artist, designer, and director of the Tiltfactor game research lab at Hunter College, She is the creator of “The Adventures of Josie True,” the first internet adventure game for girls, and is co-founder of Rapunsel, a research project to teach girls programming. Her projects have been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Pacific Cultural Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In the 1990s, Flanagan was also a media producer/game designer, garnering over 20 international awards for titles produced for The Discovery Channel, Creative Wonders/ABC, and Knowledge Adventure. Her artworks have been exhibited globally at such venues as the Central Fine Arts Gallery (New York), Altérités: Interdisciplinarité & Pratiques “Féminines” de L’Espace (Paris France), and the Whitney 2002 Biennial (New York).

Dr. Helen Nissenbaum, Professor, Department of Culture and Communication and Faculty Fellow, Information Law Institute, New York University, conducts research in the social, ethical, and political dimensions of information and communications technology. Her scholarly publications span the topics of privacy, property rights, electronic publication, accountability, the use of computers in education, and values in the design of computer and information systems. Her research on values in design, security, and privacy have been supported through grants from the National Science Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Nissenbaum’s books include Emotion and Focus, Computers, Ethics and Social Values (coedited with D.J. Johnson), and Academy and the Internet (co-edited with Monroe Prince) and she is a co-founding editor of the journal, Ethics and Information Technology. At Princeton University, she served as Associate Director of the University Center for Human Values and before that held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University. She holds a B.A. with honors from the University of Witwatersand, Johannesburg, an M.A. in Education, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford University.

ADVISORY BOARD
Katie Salen is co-author of Rules of Play and the Director of Graduate Studies, Design & Technology program at Parsons School of Design. She is the lead designer on a recent MacArthur Foundation funded game design project.

Frank Lantz is the Principal of AREA/CODE, a New York game design company.

Dr. Celia Pearce has 20 years of experience design including theme parks and games, and is currently a professor at Georgia Tech.

Tracy Fullerton is a veteran game designer teaching at USC’s game design program.

Philip Brey is associate professor of philosophy of technology and vice chair of the department of philosophy, University of Twente, the Netherlands and director of the Centre for Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Science (CEPTES).

AFFILIATED INSTITUTIONS

The International Game Developers Association
Rochester Institute of Technology
University of Southern California
Georgia Institute of Technology
New York University
Hunter College

RESEARCH AFFILIATES
Dr. JoEllen Fisherkeller (MA/PhD, University of California at Berkeley; BA, University of California at San Diego) is Associate Professor in the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University. Her research and teaching interests focus on young people¹s everyday experiences with popular media and communication technologies, identity negotiation and cultural learning in context, and media education principles and practices. She has published a book and many articles in the disciplines of communication and media studies, education, and anthropology.

Dr. Ricki Goldman, media and learning theorist, digital video ethnographer, and designer, is Associate Professor in the Department of Administration, Leadership, and Technology in NYU Steinhardt. Her research and teaching interests focus on how students from elementary school to university take on epistemologically different epistemological “attitudes” when using a range of advanced technologies. Goldman (PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; MA, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; and BA, University of British Columbia) is also Co-Director of the CREATE Lab where she and her research group design digital video analysis tools—most recently, Orion™. A leading pioneer in the area of online collaborative video research environments for twenty years, she has published books, articles and chapters and presented her work at over a hundred scholarly events on what she has coined the Points of Viewing Theory and the Perspectivity Framework for Online Video Analysis.Descriptions of Orion™ and her most recent book can be found at http://www.videoresearch.org .

Dr. Jan L. Plass is the director of the Program in Educational Communication & Technology as well as the director of the Consortium for Research and Evaluation of Advanced Technologies in Education (CREATE) at New York University. His research explores the intersection of cognitive science, computer science, and design to further our understanding of the effective use of multimedia and the web for learning and instruction. He has recently written about cognitive load in multimedia learning and has been studying the effects of individual differences on second language acquisition and on the comprehension of scientific materials. His interests also include the design and development of instructional multimedia and web applications, and particularly issues of information architecture, interaction design, and information design. He is a member of the editorial board of academic journals such as Journal of Educational Psychology, Journal of Research on Technology in Education, and International Journal of e-Learning.

STUDENT RESEARCH AFFILIATES
Jonathan Belman is a 1st year doctoral student in the Educational Communication and Technology program at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Education. He holds an M.A. from McGill University in English Literature, and an Ed.M. from Harvard University in Human Development and Psychology. His research interests include the design and evaluation of educational video games, the integration of games into K-12 classroom education, and the use of video games to promote social and political activism.

Jim Diamond is a 5th year doctoral candidate in the Educational Communication and Technology program in the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University. He is currently working on his dissertation proposal, entitled “Exploring Historical Empathy with an Educational Video Game.” His research interests include educational video games, K–12 technology integration, and technologies as tools to promote social justice and individual achievement. Jim has managed the VAP curriculum development and associated research. He teaches as an adjunct lecturer at NYU and is engaged in a number of research projects related to educational technology. He’s also a researcher at the Center for Children and Technology in New York City. And if that doesn’t keep him busy enough, he also reads a lot of political blogs. He can be contacted at jpd [at] nyu [dot] edu.

Suyin Looui is a 2nd year MFA student in the Integrated Media Arts program at Hunter College and a Tiltfactor Research Fellow. She is a media artist and social educator with over 10 years of experience in education, outreach and research. She is a graduate of the Interactive Art and Entertainment Program at the Canadian Film Centre and has worked on art and media projects throughout Canada, USA, Africa and the UK to engage the public in a dialogue around important social issues. Her current work investigates issues of location and identity through video, installation, and interactive media.

Angela Ferraiolo is a graduate student in the Hunter MFA program in Integrated Media Arts where she is using Flash to build interactive documentaries. She has worked professionally for H20, Westwood Studios, and Electronic Arts, and was the head writer for the RPG Aidyn Chronicles and the MMORPG Earth and Beyond. She has been programming and designing interactive narratives since 1999.

Jay Bachhuber is a designer and educator interested in creating serious games that are more dynamic than didactic. In addition to his work in the Values at Play project, he is also the Gaming Specialist at Global Kids, Inc., managing an after school program at Canarsie High School that teaches teenagers serious game design. His current work with video games is informed by his prior experience as an investigative journalist, and he believes gaming could do to television news what the printing press did to the town crier. He also hates cars.

Alice Bonvicini, an Italian-born/Brooklyn-based artist, is a Tiltfactor Research Fellow who uses documentary filmmaking and interactive digital work to render visible the interconnectedness between important sociopolitical issues.

Nicholas Pappas is an undergraduate at Hunter College majoring in New Media studies. His interests include exploring the narrative potential of games and utilizing that potential to create unique and socially conscious game concepts. He currently works at Tiltfactor as a member of the game design team, and is a big fan of Regina Spektor.

Brian Mayzak, a student at RIT, is an information technologist concentrating in areas of multimedia interaction, web development, and web/database integration. With a passion for gaming, technology, and art, Brian hopes to mix these interests in his future career path, applying not only his technical knowledge, but adding a creative edge and a focus on usability and fun. Through the use of online platforms, such as Adobe Flash, he is interested in bringing new levels of social interaction and creativity onto the web. Brian is set to graduate from RIT at the end of 2008 and hopes to continue in the field of web development and multimedia interaction.
Flash Work: http://people.rit.edu/~bcm4396/flash/

Greg Kohl is a 4th year Computer Science major at Rochester Institute of Technology who enjoys programming a variety of things in multiple languages. Languages that he likes to program in are ASP .NET, C#, Java, Actionscript 3.0. He has always enjoyed playing games, RPG’s being his favorite genera, with his favorite being any Nintendo System.

Ben Dapkiewicz is a second year student in Game Design & Development at Rochester Institute of Technology. Ben is from a small town in Vermont where he has lived up until coming to RIT. He loves gaming, listening to music, watching movies, and drumming. His favorite games include World of Warcraft (although retired), Warcraft III, and Rock Band. Die for Dethklok!

Fabio Ernesto Corredor is an intermedia artist whose work invests on the subjective perception of information and media. He has created multiple characters that perform personal political utopias mediated by different aesthetic structures and apparatuses. The themes of autonomy, otherness, self sufficient apolitical systems, and alienation are always idealistic recurrent subjects that are questioned and practiced in his work. His latest work explores the possibilities of video games and real time graphics as mediums to create pieces that could offer certain sense of agency for the public to explore and perform such ideas.

Francisca Caporali is a Brazilian artist based in Brooklyn. She has a degree in Social Communications, a Masters Degree from MECAD - ESDI in Barcelona, Spain. She has worked extensively in video, internet and interactive installations. Her work has been shown in over 50 festivals and exhibitions.

Jarah Moesch is currently investigating intrinsic systems of gender and religion through the repetition and ritualization of the apparatus of knowledge. She is an MFA candidate in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College. She has shown her work internationally, including Thailand, Brazil, Canada, Slovenia and the United States.

Andy Lemke is currently in his last semester as an undergraduate at Hunter College. Working as an intern and content editor for Tiltfactor, he looks to use the skills learned to pursue a career in editing. He enjoys whiskey, wasabi, and re-runs of “The Avengers.”