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Games and Civic Engagement

November 8, 2007
Mario Armstrong technology correspondent, NPR
Ian Bogost co-founder, Persuasive Games
Eric Klopfer director, teacher education program, MIT

Eric Klopfer, director of the teacher education program at MIT, moderates a discussion about how videogames might encourage public awareness and citizenship.

A generation of scholars, critics and political leaders has denounced videogames as at best a distraction and at worst a negative influence on society. Yet for a growing generation of activists and researchers, games may also represent a resource for engaging young people with the political process and heightening their awareness of social issues. In what ways do young people use the online societies constructed in multiplayer games to rehearse and refine skills at citizenship? And what might it mean to empower young people to create their own games to reflect their perceptions of the world around them?

WGBH
MIT Communications Forum
Image of Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames
Author: Ian Bogost
Publisher: The MIT Press (2007)
Binding: Hardcover, 432 pages
Image of Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism
Author: Ian Bogost
Publisher: The MIT Press (2008)
Binding: Paperback, 264 pages
Image of Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System (Platform Studies)
Author: Ian Bogost, Nick Montfort
Publisher: The MIT Press (2009)
Binding: Hardcover, 184 pages