Inclusion and Education through Gaming

Hello and welcome to Lights, Camera, Inclusion, a video series by Now and Next, the Canada Media Fund's editorial platform. We're back for season three and this time we are in Toronto. Over the next few episodes, you will meet some inspiring leaders who are working hard to make sure that our kids and youth have access to inclusive, insightful and engaging content. Kids today are watching more shows than ever. So how do we make sure that those stories are as rich? and impactful as possible. Stand by as my guests are about to answer those questions and more. Let's go! I'm joined on this third episode by Dr. Chris Alexander, Associate Professor of Game Design at the Toronto Metropolitan University and director of the Red Bull Gaming Hub. Dr. Alexander is an advocate for using video games as an interactive and powerful learning tool. He believes parents have a central role to play when it comes to curating inclusive games for their children. Dr. Alexander, dear Chris, hi! Hi, how are you doing? Good, it's really good to see you and thank you for welcoming me into the Red Bull Gaming Hub at the Creative School, TMU, of which you're the director. place exactly. Oh first of all thanks for having me it's such an honor to have you and meet you in real life finally after two years. So this is the Red Bull Gaming Hub we focus on three core areas video game design solo production and the evolution of education. So we like to call it pilot training. We've got 36 stations here and we teach folks how to make theory become practical. So you know in this season of light camera inclusion we're focusing on children and youth and you know and the screens they watch and interact with and yet there's one screen we don't really talk much about and we know that 80% of Canadian youth own a gaming device right? So you focus a lot on the power of gaming as a very powerful learning tool so could you take me through why like gaming how it differs from the other types of you know um media platforms excellent question so in my mind the way that video games distance itself from other medium is because it contains audio text and video but this is where the learning parts comes in we have autonomy that is the player the user is in charge of when they learn something. I'll give you an example. Let's say we're playing a game and we run around a corner and we fall into a hole. We respawn at the beginning and without any words we know, I better be careful when I go around that corner. If you look at the way that feedback comes to us in the classroom, there was nothing as quick. And a lot of times when we're talking about video games, we fail to mention that idea of, I get to know how well I'm doing instantly and I'm in a safe space where I can keep trying until I get good. at a specific skill. And tell me, like, do you have some, because you're obviously a professor, do you have some, you know, examples from your teaching of how gaming and that, you know, kind of interactive aspect has helped or is helping young people you know, develop their empathy, develop, you know, social skills when it comes to understanding a perspective that's not their own to begin with? Great question. So in my most recent TED Talk, I talk about a game called Virginia. Well, Virginia is a game that looks at a newly hired FBI agent who is tasked with investigating the only other female agent in the precinct. And that game is based on a true story. So in my class... Last year's class was 308 students. Next year is gonna be 1,200 rather. Each week we run a roulette and one student gets selected to play a game live together in front of the entire school. When we play Virginia, a lot of times people, oh, it's the first time I've experienced this kind of story and we talk about that. And after we talk about it, then we ask the question that transforms the minds, which is, how would you build that? And how would you build your own version of that? And that's when you see. see this idea about video games like wait a second I can actually build whatever I want that's why this lab gets filled and that's why those classes class numbers go up because it's one of the only medium it's accessible it's easy to learn and make mistakes and iterate without a ton of money being invested in it and most importantly people able to see themselves in the production process yeah that's so important and you know we talk a lot about seeing ourselves on screen but it's a different thing Being part of creating that screen, right? With people who look like you, who interact like you. Chris, in the past you've debunked quite a few myths around gaming and children, sometimes coming from anxious parents. Can you tell me more? So, I get a lot of questions from parents about video games and addiction and child consumption. And I usually start trying to be patient by telling them the story, my own story. So when I was 14 years of age, I said to my parents, all I want to do is play video games all day, every day. My parents, they looked at me and they said, yep, absolutely. And I was shocked. I said, really? Yeah. And they said, you can play as many video games as you want, as long as you pay for them. Immediately I... Okay, fine. I would work and work and I started buying my own games. And I started playing my own games and I was like, ah, see, you told me I could play as much as... But they tricked me into financial literacy. They tricked me into you're going to whatever you want to do. You have to support it. And when I tell that story to many parents, they're like, oh. And I say later when I got older and PCs were a thing and some of my friends started playing PCs. I said, well, I want a PC. And they just looked at me. Sure, you can have a PC. So then I learned it was cheaper to build your own computer than it was to buy. Right. And as a result, I started building computers and then selling the skill of building computers for others to make money. Last summer in this hub. We worked with 12 underserved community members and I promised when I was able to, I wanted to give that same skill of building computers. So we had 12 students that were handpicked from the community to come and learn how to build computers for a client. And then on the very last day, I had them pack up the machines to deliver to the clients who were waiting outside. I said, what are you going to say to your client? I'm going to say I spent so much time on tucking in those wires. Because at the beginning, they were like, this is going to be impossible. I said, it's only nine parts. You can do it. And they were like, nah, sir, that's cap. And so after the first day, they're like, oh, my gosh, this is easy. Then they say, I'm going to tell the client that, you know, I put my blood, sweat, and tears into all these wires, all the connections, and setting it up, all of that. I did that. They stood up. They're getting ready for the client to come in. And I said, the client for these machines. is you. You build this machine for yourself and now I want you to never buy a pre-built computer because that's how I provided for myself, my family, and my community by the skill of process, the skill of building. So is that your advice to parents then? I can only tell my story. I can't tell folks what to do. I can tell you what was done for me. So when I tell parents what happened in my own life. They start to think. Because there are these cases that happen with companies where they're suing the company for their kids racking up thousands of dollars in debt. And I ask them questions. How does an eight-year-old have a PlayStation 5? And I wait. I said, who's paying for the internet at eight? If they're making in-game purchases, how is that possible? With a credit card. And then I say, responsibility pulls inward and blame pushes outward. My wife has the greatest quote. She says, you can't ask... technology to take care of your kids and then get mad at how it did it. Yeah, and you know, you've mentioned some really, you know, inclusive games that, you know, showcase a lot of diversity, but I feel that the majority of young people maybe play a small number of the total offer that exists out there. So how do we make sure that those games that are made responsibly, that are featuring diverse voices that are inherently from the conception to creating the characters, that there's so much infused diversity in there. So how do we find those games? How do we find movies? Film, television, and books. In some cases, and go back to my mom, my mom was a librarian. My wife right now, she curates the books in our house. We read Yotsuba, we read anime, manga, and she's a curator. In my house, I'm the curator for video games. If we understand that the video games medium is as rich as other, in terms of representation specifically, We won't let external factors, and we do it with other things. We're not going to bring horror books in for our kids. Sure. But we might say, here's my credit card. Take whatever you want. Again, responsibility pulls inward and blame pushes outward. We can't say all games are exclusive. But at the same time, there's not a single place, space, game, movie, film where everybody is included. So the responsibility to find out where you belong, I believe it's on. A lot of times the parents, but whoever controls access to the video games, the technology in general. But the most important thing would be what better way to search out inclusion than to learn how to create. My next question was going to be, you know, about some myths in the video game industry and some things that are factual. Like there's still research showing that there's such a way to go in terms of. Not only diversity in the games, but the hiring process that so many could become a lot richer if more people from various backgrounds would be hired by those companies and then the output would be a lot more rich, right? And if that is not happening, how is it that... So you feel like the onus should be on the individual? There's a Canadian game called Venba that just got released, I think, last year about the Sri Lankan immigration story to Canada. And part of the core mechanics is building Tamil cuisine. I play this game in the class with the students. I'm just showing what I know. What my favorite thing to do is tell students to look at my Steam library to see the games that I own. But again, I'm acting as a curator. I seek out games, games come to me, people send me demos all the time, like this is amazing and I talk about it. Because I can tell you that Venba has been up for a couple of awards this year. I can tell you that The Long Dark is a cult classic in Canada. I can tell you that Spiritfarer, which is a game about literally transitioning from life into death, makes students cry in my classroom. I can tell you that Cuphead from Vancouver has done so well that there's a Netflix series about it. But if you're watching this right now and you haven't heard of any of these games, you need a curator. Because there are games for everyone out there. You can't suggest that if you stand outside of the movie theater, I don't see any titles that are for me, and walk away. Is that it? Another one which is fun. Epic Games'Unreal Engine. The game that makes Fortnite, sorry, the engine that makes Fortnite and the backgrounds behind seasons one and three of The Mandalorian. That tool. Last year has now been put into Fortnite. And as of almost three years ago now, more than half of the people in Fortnite, they're no longer playing the game. They're building worlds. So now you have a generation of kids who are not only building and learning how to become builders and possibly modern day architects, because you know the technology is going to get better, but they also have access for free to industry level tools while they're playing Fortnite. And most people don't know that that's a thing. And don't you feel that... that's the thing like parents feel like so disconnected or overwhelmed or they can't really catch up so it becomes something that they tend to not really try to understand and that's going to get worse right with the you know with AI with all the tools that some people just are not ready or willing or for various reasons not wanting to understand the technology and then the kids are like becoming geniuses at this right so this seems is there like a gap that's like widening So this idea of everything operating in silos is just not true when it comes to video games. And you wouldn't suggest that for a film or a movie that you don't seek out titles that you want to watch. It's the same thing. So what I think is in a lot of times there's like a hesitance to believe that it's possible. And when you look at what our students are doing, a lot of the students in the last how many years? Sophia Beltran, she got two jobs at Stitch Media and then at Behavior Interactive. Jamie Hercombe works for Epic Games. Olivia Moulet also works for Epic Games. Darian Schumacher, they got employed by Ubisoft. Riel Braid, who works with me here in the lab, she's a psychologist, came into the class because she took Introduction to Game Design, this is my course, open to the entire university, so I get all disciplines in there. And when they see the art of design, they see themselves like, oh, you know what? I could do that. And if Riel was here right now, you'd see her building a world because she's here all the time. And explaining like, you know what? I want to tell my story. There's this idea of ownership for the tech, and you also mentioned AI. I love showing students how I learned Unreal Engine in a year by telling ChatGPT to act as the engine, speak to me as if I'm five, and any time I ask questions, respond to me in a curricular format. But who thinks to prompt like that? Who thinks to be selfish enough? And that, to me, should be the responsibility of educators to be able to teach folks how to think critically about prompting, which is. The third area of one of my areas of specialization, which is enhancing education. It's debunking that it's like a fear because of what's been happening with many of our phones. It's a black box. We don't know what happens when it breaks and we're too scared to touch it. I've never been hesitant to believe that if it was made, it can be taken apart. You can see it. You can hear it. It can be ripped. It can be analyzed. And it's okay to make mistakes, but now everything is smooth and sealed and everybody's like, oh, I don't think I can. That's usually what I debug in the classroom. The students come into this classroom and they're like, oh, I don't think I can make my game. What game do you want to make? I want to make a game that goes through nature. I'm like, okay, well, when you're building a game in an environment, think of things in the reverse. Think of the floor as the thing that makes the noise and put the sound on the ground. Whenever the player walks on this side, there's grass. Whenever the player walks on that side, it's concrete. And the sound's coming from the floor, but the player won't know. And they're like, oh, that's the way it works. And I debunk other things, like in most driving games, your viewers are not going to like this, the car doesn't move. Only the background moves. And when you look at it now, you're like, oh my gosh, I thought it was so good in Mario Kart, but like, you just see the background moving. It's like one of those old school. So these types of things to help debunk that fear of, I can't, you just put them in front of the tools and show them, oh. I can. Yeah, so it's about getting involved, really. Gotta get involved. And so now you're creating your own games, like you're in that process. What did you feel is or was missing from, you know, the offer right now? So in terms of the video game that I'm building, I'm working on two video games right now, and I'm trying to practice what I preach. And what I mean by that is, I love my kids. I love to... I've been teaching kids, as you know, for 11 years with the town of Markham, and I wanted to make a typing game. One of my favorite typing games was on the Sega Dreamcast, and it was called The Typing of the Dead. They remade House of the Dead, removed the guns, and instead, all of the agents have keyboards, and the zombies have words above their heads. And in order to destroy the zombie, you have to type the word, but it's a secret game to teach you touch typing. Because you can't, like, the zombies are coming at you, you're just, and eventually, you're just... Oh my gosh. So good at typing. Yeah, and so I love, I want to make a spiritual successor to that using bread and toast but the caveat to that is I'm using geolocation to only give you recipes that are based on where you live. So somebody's going to open up, the code name is bread type, you're going to open it up in a different part of the world and you're going to get a different kind of bread but it's only going to be giving you recipes because what you'll unlock, to me, will be some form of self-sufficiency. That's the first game. The second one, which we're working on. It's called Bearable, and it's a game about family, life, and happiness. And one of my favorite things that I've been fortunate enough to have in my life was a father. And I've come from a two-parent household, and I don't see any games that talk about that. And so I want to make a game that specifically talks about some of the things that I've done. Like sleep training two babies separately in one night. Showing folks the process, showing how it's done. Like. and this is the prototype we're working on right now, something nobody told me when I became a father. Oh, they hide so many things. It's, you know. Is that I'm the tooth fairy. And the sheer dread of my child's future, imagination, everything in my hand. So there's a level that we're working on right now where you have to sneak into the baby's bed and we're going to have a quick time event that is probably butt mashing of lifting up the pillow. Maintaining it, taking out the tooth, putting back the money and it's gonna get harder, and then slowly lowering the pillow and leaving. And it's supposed to feel stressful, but it's supposed to also show like, man, what a joy to be able to care that much, to want to not break. And then at the end of the level, there's going to be a question. I'm kind of ruining it, but at the end... You're at the breakfast table and your child comes down all excited, oh daddy the tooth fairy came, and you have choice options of how to respond. You can say I did it, or you can say oh that's great, and then you learn in the game that sometimes you gotta lie to your kids. So I don't see games like that as the game that I'm making because I'm excited just to hear what people say. I'm excited so that's my answer. Reflecting on your own career and success, what do you feel like at an industrial level could be done to better support game designers coming from underrepresented communities, marginalized communities, what should we do? be doing more of? I believe that what can be done more is to have more visible curators and librarians. I believe that if folks take a look at the monetization structure for building levels in Fortnite and the kind of money that folks are making building in Fortnite, they would probably stop playing the game and start thinking about what can I do to captivate an audience? Immediately business style thinking. That gives a different meaning to sitting down in front of a game console, right? I think a lot of times, no, pretty much every time, things boil down to education and folks just not knowing. How do, what? I can make money off, wait, these tools are free? A lot of times, because I also teach streaming on Twitch, a lot of people don't know those tools are free. And I will show anybody, including teachers, I'm trying to run workshops for teachers to show them how to professionally present themselves online. And a part of what happens after they get it to look... the way they know what looks great is, oh, so now what am I going to talk about? And to me, I think that's what's missing. People feel like they don't have a voice, but everybody does. Let's show everybody what that voice is. Because I feel like now there's too much complaining, not enough action. You can say there's not enough representation and walk away, or you can make a game about fatherhood. And I have people come up to me and saying, oh, as a X, as Y, I have to work 10 times harder than everybody else. And I always smile at them and I say, hmm, perhaps there's a different way of thinking about that. They say, what do you mean? So let's do the exercise. You've heard people say that you and your own, with your brilliant superpower of journalism, that you've had to work 10 times harder than everybody else. Is that true for you? In a way. Okay. So let me ask you some questions. If you can run 10 times faster than somebody else, what does that mean? Well, you can achieve 10 times more. If you can do 10 times more push-ups than everybody else, what would that mean? You're 10 times stronger. I feel like I'm in the student professor seat now. So when somebody tells me that I have to work 10 times harder than everybody else... You see an opportunity. I switch that word to can. That means I can work 10 times harder than everybody else. And what are you going to do with that ability? You can say I... have to work 10 times harder or I can't work 10 times harder. It's a very different outcome from a slight word change. And I wish people would think about that when they say, oh, I have to. You have to or you can't. Because the idea of supervising as many students and being able to reach as many students is something I know I can do and I want to do it. So what do you do with that superpower after that? Yeah. What do you do with it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right, Chris, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for. welcoming me in your space and I wish you the best moving forward. Anytime, you're the best. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Kids today are watching more shows than ever. So how do we make sure that those stories are as rich? and impactful as possible.

Stand by as my guests are about to answer those questions and more. Let's go! I'm joined on this third episode by Dr. Chris Alexander, Associate Professor of Game Design at the Toronto Metropolitan University and director of the Red Bull Gaming Hub.

Dr. Alexander is an advocate for using video games as an interactive and powerful learning tool. He believes parents have a central role to play when it comes to curating inclusive games for their children. Dr. Alexander, dear Chris, hi!

Hi, how are you doing? Good, it's really good to see you and thank you for welcoming me into the Red Bull Gaming Hub at the Creative School, TMU, of which you're the director. place exactly. Oh first of all thanks for having me it's such an honor to have you and meet you in real life finally after two years. So this is the Red Bull Gaming Hub we focus on three core areas video game design solo production and the evolution of education.

So we like to call it pilot training. We've got 36 stations here and we teach folks how to make theory become practical. So you know in this season of light camera inclusion we're focusing on children and youth and you know and the screens they watch and interact with and yet there's one screen we don't really talk much about and we know that 80% of Canadian youth own a gaming device right? So you focus a lot on the power of gaming as a very powerful learning tool so could you take me through why like gaming how it differs from the other types of you know um media platforms excellent question so in my mind the way that video games distance itself from other medium is because it contains audio text and video but this is where the learning parts comes in we have autonomy that is the player the user is in charge of when they learn something.

I'll give you an example. Let's say we're playing a game and we run around a corner and we fall into a hole. We respawn at the beginning and without any words we know, I better be careful when I go around that corner.

If you look at the way that feedback comes to us in the classroom, there was nothing as quick. And a lot of times when we're talking about video games, we fail to mention that idea of, I get to know how well I'm doing instantly and I'm in a safe space where I can keep trying until I get good. at a specific skill. And tell me, like, do you have some, because you're obviously a professor, do you have some, you know, examples from your teaching of how gaming and that, you know, kind of interactive aspect has helped or is helping young people you know, develop their empathy, develop, you know, social skills when it comes to understanding a perspective that's not their own to begin with? Great question.

So in my most recent TED Talk, I talk about a game called Virginia. Well, Virginia is a game that looks at a newly hired FBI agent who is tasked with investigating the only other female agent in the precinct. And that game is based on a true story.

So in my class... Last year's class was 308 students. Next year is gonna be 1,200 rather.

Each week we run a roulette and one student gets selected to play a game live together in front of the entire school. When we play Virginia, a lot of times people, oh, it's the first time I've experienced this kind of story and we talk about that. And after we talk about it, then we ask the question that transforms the minds, which is, how would you build that? And how would you build your own version of that? And that's when you see.

see this idea about video games like wait a second I can actually build whatever I want that's why this lab gets filled and that's why those classes class numbers go up because it's one of the only medium it's accessible it's easy to learn and make mistakes and iterate without a ton of money being invested in it and most importantly people able to see themselves in the production process yeah that's so important and you know we talk a lot about seeing ourselves on screen but it's a different thing Being part of creating that screen, right? With people who look like you, who interact like you. Chris, in the past you've debunked quite a few myths around gaming and children, sometimes coming from anxious parents.

Can you tell me more? So, I get a lot of questions from parents about video games and addiction and child consumption. And I usually start trying to be patient by telling them the story, my own story.

So when I was 14 years of age, I said to my parents, all I want to do is play video games all day, every day. My parents, they looked at me and they said, yep, absolutely. And I was shocked.

I said, really? Yeah. And they said, you can play as many video games as you want, as long as you pay for them. Immediately I... Okay, fine.

I would work and work and I started buying my own games. And I started playing my own games and I was like, ah, see, you told me I could play as much as... But they tricked me into financial literacy. They tricked me into you're going to whatever you want to do.

You have to support it. And when I tell that story to many parents, they're like, oh. And I say later when I got older and PCs were a thing and some of my friends started playing PCs.

I said, well, I want a PC. And they just looked at me. Sure, you can have a PC. So then I learned it was cheaper to build your own computer than it was to buy. Right.

And as a result, I started building computers and then selling the skill of building computers for others to make money. Last summer in this hub. We worked with 12 underserved community members and I promised when I was able to, I wanted to give that same skill of building computers.

So we had 12 students that were handpicked from the community to come and learn how to build computers for a client. And then on the very last day, I had them pack up the machines to deliver to the clients who were waiting outside. I said, what are you going to say to your client? I'm going to say I spent so much time on tucking in those wires. Because at the beginning, they were like, this is going to be impossible.

I said, it's only nine parts. You can do it. And they were like, nah, sir, that's cap.

And so after the first day, they're like, oh, my gosh, this is easy. Then they say, I'm going to tell the client that, you know, I put my blood, sweat, and tears into all these wires, all the connections, and setting it up, all of that. I did that.

They stood up. They're getting ready for the client to come in. And I said, the client for these machines.

is you. You build this machine for yourself and now I want you to never buy a pre-built computer because that's how I provided for myself, my family, and my community by the skill of process, the skill of building. So is that your advice to parents then? I can only tell my story. I can't tell folks what to do.

I can tell you what was done for me. So when I tell parents what happened in my own life. They start to think.

Because there are these cases that happen with companies where they're suing the company for their kids racking up thousands of dollars in debt. And I ask them questions. How does an eight-year-old have a PlayStation 5? And I wait.

I said, who's paying for the internet at eight? If they're making in-game purchases, how is that possible? With a credit card. And then I say, responsibility pulls inward and blame pushes outward.

My wife has the greatest quote. She says, you can't ask... technology to take care of your kids and then get mad at how it did it.

Yeah, and you know, you've mentioned some really, you know, inclusive games that, you know, showcase a lot of diversity, but I feel that the majority of young people maybe play a small number of the total offer that exists out there. So how do we make sure that those games that are made responsibly, that are featuring diverse voices that are inherently from the conception to creating the characters, that there's so much infused diversity in there. So how do we find those games?

How do we find movies? Film, television, and books. In some cases, and go back to my mom, my mom was a librarian. My wife right now, she curates the books in our house.

We read Yotsuba, we read anime, manga, and she's a curator. In my house, I'm the curator for video games. If we understand that the video games medium is as rich as other, in terms of representation specifically, We won't let external factors, and we do it with other things.

We're not going to bring horror books in for our kids. Sure. But we might say, here's my credit card.

Take whatever you want. Again, responsibility pulls inward and blame pushes outward. We can't say all games are exclusive.

But at the same time, there's not a single place, space, game, movie, film where everybody is included. So the responsibility to find out where you belong, I believe it's on. A lot of times the parents, but whoever controls access to the video games, the technology in general. But the most important thing would be what better way to search out inclusion than to learn how to create. My next question was going to be, you know, about some myths in the video game industry and some things that are factual.

Like there's still research showing that there's such a way to go in terms of. Not only diversity in the games, but the hiring process that so many could become a lot richer if more people from various backgrounds would be hired by those companies and then the output would be a lot more rich, right? And if that is not happening, how is it that...

So you feel like the onus should be on the individual? There's a Canadian game called Venba that just got released, I think, last year about the Sri Lankan immigration story to Canada. And part of the core mechanics is building Tamil cuisine. I play this game in the class with the students. I'm just showing what I know.

What my favorite thing to do is tell students to look at my Steam library to see the games that I own. But again, I'm acting as a curator. I seek out games, games come to me, people send me demos all the time, like this is amazing and I talk about it.

Because I can tell you that Venba has been up for a couple of awards this year. I can tell you that The Long Dark is a cult classic in Canada. I can tell you that Spiritfarer, which is a game about literally transitioning from life into death, makes students cry in my classroom.

I can tell you that Cuphead from Vancouver has done so well that there's a Netflix series about it. But if you're watching this right now and you haven't heard of any of these games, you need a curator. Because there are games for everyone out there.

You can't suggest that if you stand outside of the movie theater, I don't see any titles that are for me, and walk away. Is that it? Another one which is fun.

Epic Games'Unreal Engine. The game that makes Fortnite, sorry, the engine that makes Fortnite and the backgrounds behind seasons one and three of The Mandalorian. That tool.

Last year has now been put into Fortnite. And as of almost three years ago now, more than half of the people in Fortnite, they're no longer playing the game. They're building worlds.

So now you have a generation of kids who are not only building and learning how to become builders and possibly modern day architects, because you know the technology is going to get better, but they also have access for free to industry level tools while they're playing Fortnite. And most people don't know that that's a thing. And don't you feel that...

that's the thing like parents feel like so disconnected or overwhelmed or they can't really catch up so it becomes something that they tend to not really try to understand and that's going to get worse right with the you know with AI with all the tools that some people just are not ready or willing or for various reasons not wanting to understand the technology and then the kids are like becoming geniuses at this right so this seems is there like a gap that's like widening So this idea of everything operating in silos is just not true when it comes to video games. And you wouldn't suggest that for a film or a movie that you don't seek out titles that you want to watch. It's the same thing.

So what I think is in a lot of times there's like a hesitance to believe that it's possible. And when you look at what our students are doing, a lot of the students in the last how many years? Sophia Beltran, she got two jobs at Stitch Media and then at Behavior Interactive. Jamie Hercombe works for Epic Games.

Olivia Moulet also works for Epic Games. Darian Schumacher, they got employed by Ubisoft. Riel Braid, who works with me here in the lab, she's a psychologist, came into the class because she took Introduction to Game Design, this is my course, open to the entire university, so I get all disciplines in there.

And when they see the art of design, they see themselves like, oh, you know what? I could do that. And if Riel was here right now, you'd see her building a world because she's here all the time. And explaining like, you know what? I want to tell my story.

There's this idea of ownership for the tech, and you also mentioned AI. I love showing students how I learned Unreal Engine in a year by telling ChatGPT to act as the engine, speak to me as if I'm five, and any time I ask questions, respond to me in a curricular format. But who thinks to prompt like that?

Who thinks to be selfish enough? And that, to me, should be the responsibility of educators to be able to teach folks how to think critically about prompting, which is. The third area of one of my areas of specialization, which is enhancing education.

It's debunking that it's like a fear because of what's been happening with many of our phones. It's a black box. We don't know what happens when it breaks and we're too scared to touch it. I've never been hesitant to believe that if it was made, it can be taken apart.

You can see it. You can hear it. It can be ripped. It can be analyzed. And it's okay to make mistakes, but now everything is smooth and sealed and everybody's like, oh, I don't think I can.

That's usually what I debug in the classroom. The students come into this classroom and they're like, oh, I don't think I can make my game. What game do you want to make? I want to make a game that goes through nature.

I'm like, okay, well, when you're building a game in an environment, think of things in the reverse. Think of the floor as the thing that makes the noise and put the sound on the ground. Whenever the player walks on this side, there's grass. Whenever the player walks on that side, it's concrete.

And the sound's coming from the floor, but the player won't know. And they're like, oh, that's the way it works. And I debunk other things, like in most driving games, your viewers are not going to like this, the car doesn't move. Only the background moves.

And when you look at it now, you're like, oh my gosh, I thought it was so good in Mario Kart, but like, you just see the background moving. It's like one of those old school. So these types of things to help debunk that fear of, I can't, you just put them in front of the tools and show them, oh. I can. Yeah, so it's about getting involved, really.

Gotta get involved. And so now you're creating your own games, like you're in that process. What did you feel is or was missing from, you know, the offer right now? So in terms of the video game that I'm building, I'm working on two video games right now, and I'm trying to practice what I preach. And what I mean by that is, I love my kids.

I love to... I've been teaching kids, as you know, for 11 years with the town of Markham, and I wanted to make a typing game. One of my favorite typing games was on the Sega Dreamcast, and it was called The Typing of the Dead.

They remade House of the Dead, removed the guns, and instead, all of the agents have keyboards, and the zombies have words above their heads. And in order to destroy the zombie, you have to type the word, but it's a secret game to teach you touch typing. Because you can't, like, the zombies are coming at you, you're just, and eventually, you're just...

Oh my gosh. So good at typing. Yeah, and so I love, I want to make a spiritual successor to that using bread and toast but the caveat to that is I'm using geolocation to only give you recipes that are based on where you live.

So somebody's going to open up, the code name is bread type, you're going to open it up in a different part of the world and you're going to get a different kind of bread but it's only going to be giving you recipes because what you'll unlock, to me, will be some form of self-sufficiency. That's the first game. The second one, which we're working on.

It's called Bearable, and it's a game about family, life, and happiness. And one of my favorite things that I've been fortunate enough to have in my life was a father. And I've come from a two-parent household, and I don't see any games that talk about that. And so I want to make a game that specifically talks about some of the things that I've done. Like sleep training two babies separately in one night.

Showing folks the process, showing how it's done. Like. and this is the prototype we're working on right now, something nobody told me when I became a father. Oh, they hide so many things. It's, you know.

Is that I'm the tooth fairy. And the sheer dread of my child's future, imagination, everything in my hand. So there's a level that we're working on right now where you have to sneak into the baby's bed and we're going to have a quick time event that is probably butt mashing of lifting up the pillow.

Maintaining it, taking out the tooth, putting back the money and it's gonna get harder, and then slowly lowering the pillow and leaving. And it's supposed to feel stressful, but it's supposed to also show like, man, what a joy to be able to care that much, to want to not break. And then at the end of the level, there's going to be a question.

I'm kind of ruining it, but at the end... You're at the breakfast table and your child comes down all excited, oh daddy the tooth fairy came, and you have choice options of how to respond. You can say I did it, or you can say oh that's great, and then you learn in the game that sometimes you gotta lie to your kids.

So I don't see games like that as the game that I'm making because I'm excited just to hear what people say. I'm excited so that's my answer. Reflecting on your own career and success, what do you feel like at an industrial level could be done to better support game designers coming from underrepresented communities, marginalized communities, what should we do?

be doing more of? I believe that what can be done more is to have more visible curators and librarians. I believe that if folks take a look at the monetization structure for building levels in Fortnite and the kind of money that folks are making building in Fortnite, they would probably stop playing the game and start thinking about what can I do to captivate an audience? Immediately business style thinking. That gives a different meaning to sitting down in front of a game console, right?

I think a lot of times, no, pretty much every time, things boil down to education and folks just not knowing. How do, what? I can make money off, wait, these tools are free?

A lot of times, because I also teach streaming on Twitch, a lot of people don't know those tools are free. And I will show anybody, including teachers, I'm trying to run workshops for teachers to show them how to professionally present themselves online. And a part of what happens after they get it to look...

the way they know what looks great is, oh, so now what am I going to talk about? And to me, I think that's what's missing. People feel like they don't have a voice, but everybody does. Let's show everybody what that voice is. Because I feel like now there's too much complaining, not enough action.

You can say there's not enough representation and walk away, or you can make a game about fatherhood. And I have people come up to me and saying, oh, as a X, as Y, I have to work 10 times harder than everybody else. And I always smile at them and I say, hmm, perhaps there's a different way of thinking about that. They say, what do you mean?

So let's do the exercise. You've heard people say that you and your own, with your brilliant superpower of journalism, that you've had to work 10 times harder than everybody else. Is that true for you?

In a way. Okay. So let me ask you some questions. If you can run 10 times faster than somebody else, what does that mean? Well, you can achieve 10 times more.

If you can do 10 times more push-ups than everybody else, what would that mean? You're 10 times stronger. I feel like I'm in the student professor seat now.

So when somebody tells me that I have to work 10 times harder than everybody else... You see an opportunity. I switch that word to can. That means I can work 10 times harder than everybody else. And what are you going to do with that ability?

You can say I... have to work 10 times harder or I can't work 10 times harder. It's a very different outcome from a slight word change.

And I wish people would think about that when they say, oh, I have to. You have to or you can't. Because the idea of supervising as many students and being able to reach as many students is something I know I can do and I want to do it. So what do you do with that superpower after that? Yeah.

What do you do with it? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. All right, Chris, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for.

welcoming me in your space and I wish you the best moving forward. Anytime, you're the best. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Transcript for:Inclusion and Education through Gaming

Transcript for:
Inclusion and Education through Gaming