T6 Flashbacks- 4

The beauty of a conference like FuturePlay is that sometimes you just get lucky enough to meet two people in somewhat different fields that are just talking about the issues. I know I often say that sometimes you learn more during the conference breaks than at the talks (not that the talks aren't awesome). Whether it is having a beer or coffee with someone, or just hanging out between sessions, you can meet some cool people.

At Future Play 2005, I had the opportunity to sit down with Ernest Adams and Henry Jenkins.

Ernest Adams consults on game design for many clients across the world. He is widely published (co-author of two of the industry’s required-reading list "Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams on Game Design" and "Break into the Game Industry: How to Get a Job Making Video Games" and numerous articles, papers and columns) and spends much of his time lecturing on game design at conferences and universities in Europe and North America. He is the founder of the International Game Developers’ Association (IGDA) and a 16-year industry veteran. Clients have included Ubisoft, THQ, Elixir Studios, Guinness World Records, Sorrent, Terraplay, and A2M. Ernest is currently on the Program Review Board of the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) Annual Conference and also on the Editorial Board of ACM Computers in Entertainment Magazine. He has a BA in Philosophy from Stanford University.

Ernest’s current projects include consulting on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for THQ, and working on a textbook edition of "Rollings and Adams on Game Design."

Henry Jenkins is Professor of Literature and Comparative Media Studies & Director, Comparative Media Studies Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

His books and articles have been major contributions to existing fields of inquiry such as film history (What Made Pistachio Nuts?: Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic; Classical Hollywood Comedy), Political Communications (Democracy and New Media) and Children’s Studies (The Children’s Culture Reader); his works have helped to establish new fields such as media ethnography (Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture; Science Fiction Audiences: Dr. Who, Star Trek and their Followers), and game studies (From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games).

His current book project, Convergence Culture: Where New and Old Media Intersect, examines contemporary trends in the entertainment industry, online culture, and audience participation. He is the principle investigator for the Education Arcade, a MIT-University of Wisconsin-Madison collaboration to explore the pedagogical use of computer and video games. He is the co-editor of the Media in Transition series at the MIT Press. He writes monthly columns on media and technology for Technology Review Online and Computer Games Magazine. He has testified about youth and violence before the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, about media literacy before the Federal Communications Commission, and about copyright before the Governor’s Board of the World Economic Forum.

Jenkins is also heading an new research collaboration, funded by the MacArthur Foundation, focused on understanding the skills children need to learn and communicate in the coming decades.

We talked video game ratings, violence in games, the GTA Hot Coffee controversy among other things.

Direct episode download.

Enjoy.