Blips: Midwestern State of Mind

Source: Chicago: Home of a New Indie Gaming Renaissance
Author: Jordan Minor
Site: Kotaku

It's no secret the the vast expanse of land between the two coasts of the United States is largely neglected when it comes to cultural video game happenings. There's an east coast epicenter up in New England and a west coast expanse between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Except for Austin, Texas, there's not a lot of video game scene visibility in the country's midsection. However, if a recent article by Jordan Minor for Kotaku is to be believed, Chicago may be on its way to filling that void.

Minor's piece offers up a solid list of names and projects that are gaining more national recognition, and I find the whole thing inspiring. As a St. Louisan it can be alienating to be invested in a cultural medium like video games, but feel limited in what physical membership in such a community means. If I wanted to attend just about any major gaming convention, it would have required a pilgrimage-level of effort to get there. Perhaps sometime in the near future, that won't feel like the case anymore.

Of course, I live in New York now, so I'm able to see the industry from the other side of the lens, but I don't plan to stay here forever, and if I find my way back to the Midwest, Chicago seems a likely destination. So, maybe my motivation is a bit self-serving, but I also think the industry could use more perspective from folks who aren't around the corner from Silicon Valley, Hollywood, or Times Square, even on the indie front. So, all I really have to say is, keep it up, Chicago!

Blips: Teaching With Games

Source: ChicagoQuest: Teaching with games in Chicago's Cabrini-Green
Author: Charlie Hall
Site: Polygon

Can games be a useful learning tool in formal education environments? Schools like ChicagoQuest certainly think so. In Charlie Hall's piece or Polygon (with accompanying video above), he shows how ChicagoQuest integrates games into their curriculum in ways that still make good on common core standards and don't abandon more traditional tools for learning either. It's all in the service of educating kids in systems thinking, so they can be critical observers of the world around them and potentially come up with feasible improvements or solutions.

It's great that ChicagoQuest was able to build so much of their institution from relative scratch because often it seems like digital media-integrated pedagogical models are tough sells in long-standing, set-in-their-ways schools. Sometimes it's a matter of funding, sometimes it's a matter of tech-savviness, and sometimes it's a matter of acceptance, but an of those factors can lead to dismissal or aversion to games integration. I'm not here to sell you on games in schools, but I would suggest giving this piece on ChicagoQuest a read and seeing what you think.