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Editor's Notes

• #2: I’m going to talk about one of my projects at the Engagement Lab that is a little different from some of the other projects you have heard about. Though we create our own games and platforms for civic engagement, like Community Planit or UpRiver, we also share our framework to help establish design communities that build their own tools and processes for human development.
• #3: Therefore our goal is to create a sustainable community of developers using game design as one of the many facets for improved design and autonomy.
• #4: In order to do this we first need to show folks how play and games can, at best, radically shift perspectives, and at the very least, engage one another in dialogue, hoping that dialogue leads us to wider change.
• #5: Its not just about creating these technologies and then implementing them into developing nations or communities, its about us trying to find ways for human development to be more human and empowering those in their communities to make their own tools by bringing everyone to the table and establishing a center for leadership.
• #6: Though I‘ll primarily be talking about our work with UNDP Egypt, keep in mind this process is adaptable for many different scenarios and contexts all over the world. Our framework is a year-long process that builds a community from the ground up by partnering with organizations in the region to initially establish a core interested group.
• #7: For this example we partnered with UNDP Egypt to first hold a three day Game Design for human Development workshop in Tahrir Square.
• #8: This lecture/workshop was for people who worked in various fields, who have never made games before, to explore this approach to human development.
• #9: Though we provided guided lectures, activities, and readings to help onboard key design concepts within the game field, the workshop was formatted like a game jam.
• #10: groups formed to brainstorm learning goals or outcomes their games will address and then they collectively wrote a game design document and created a paper prototype of their idea.
• #11: At the end of the three days, each team presented and pitched their idea to the larger group as well as played each other’s prototypes.
• #15: We had over 1000 people sign up for the initial lecture and 100’s for the workshop, and though we had to limit the number of people who could attend, this helped show us how much the community wants this type of intervention.
• #16: After that workshop, Sam and I helped these groups continue developing their games through playtesting and providing stretch goals for them to hit every two weeks. We used a combination of skype and google docs to keep in consistent contact with each group, providing them with readings and ideas for how to improve based on what stage they were at in their development.
• #17: We also did a lot of playtesting and reporting back. For example, I had my college writing class who were designing their own games, playtest the Egyptian’s games in order to give them feedback from a different cultural context. One group created Storychanger, a game that asks players to intervene in traditional stories to shift and redirect the narrative as they see fit. The game provides ways for people to re-write stories in new and empowering ways.
• #18: Finally, after a year-long development process, groups submitted their game to a panel of judges. These judges were composed of members from their community and gave the designers critical feedback. This panel, in addition to short personal applications, served as a way to decide which designers would have the opportunity to come to Boston for a week long game design camp where they would continue to workshop and develop their games while learning and meeting members of the Boston game development community.
• #19: They will arrive in Boston at 7pm tonight and will be spending the week with us at the Engagement lab at Emerson college. We are really excited to have speakers and presentations coming from the Learning Games Network, Boston Indie Game Collective, Boston Game Makers Guild, the MIT Civic Media Lab, and other independent designers from the Boston area. The ultimate aim of this camp is to give them time and resources to polish their games so they are ready for production, but also to learn more about how to teach the process they just went through. Ideally, a select number of these Egyptian designers would then be the ones to train new people interested in this process, starting the whole cycle over again. Eventually, this community would begin to sustain itself with zero intervention from outside consultants. We can’t eliminate all power structures, but by keeping this empowerment philosophy in mind through maintaining the ultimate goal of self-sustainability, we can break the cycle of reliance and instead use game design as one more way towards helping empower people and helping create sustainability in the developing world. 
• #20: We can’t eliminate all power structures, but by keeping this empowerment philosophy in mind through maintaining the ultimate goal of self-sustainability, we can break the cycle of reliance and instead use game design as one more way towards helping empower people and creating sustainability in the developing world. 
• #21: Finally, everyone is invited to join us in a public celebration of their work Thursday March 12 at 5pm at the Engagement Lab! You can reach out directly to me if you have questions.
• #22: One group created Storychanger, a game that asks players to intervene in traditional stories to shift and redirect the narrative as they see fit. The game provides ways for people to re-write stories in new and empowering ways.
• #23: Here is how the group started drafting their ideas. Originally it was meant to be played on a white board. The goal of the game is to create a new version of the story keeping in mind not to change the main story events or characters. Each team has a winner who is the best contributor to the story. Teams can compete on making better stories by other’s votes. 
• #24: As they playtested, they realized it was necessary to create a card and resource system as well as a board to play the cards on.
• #25: Players use ability cards to change the elements of the story. The art, done by Heba Farghaly Mahroos, has this nostalgic texture that makes the game’s style feel vintage.
• #26: When players place cards on the board, they also write their intended change directly onto the board, so that it becomes part of the evolving story. At the end of the game, the board functions as an object documenting their process and edits.