One could pick better role models. Justsayin'.

Lisanne Pajot & James Swirsky come immediately to mind. But I guess she is talking about a developer, and a very outspoken, polarizing one. So I dunno, maybe Jonathan Blow, or Peter Molyneux. Who else comes to mind? Maybe a certain prolific female journalist?

Auntie Pixelante? Molyneux and Blow, for sure.

I feel that to make a game about social change, it needs to first and foremost not be about social change. Social injustice is pretty polarizing: most people will fall on one side of an issue or the other. If your game seems to be in opposition to the player's belief, good luck getting them to pick up the controller. (I'm not going to provide any example scenarios due to the risk of having hypothetical social justice issues being argued back and forth, I'm sure you can come up with your own.)

The first and really only purpose of a game is fun, if one could make a very serious and important social topic entertaining without sacrificing integrity (here's looking at you, Michael Moore!), that would be an incredible feat. The Metal Gear Solid series leaps to mind, with their treatment of the Cold War and the military industrial complex. However, while those are the main themes of the narrative, each of those games is chiefly about Tactical Espionage Action.

I'm sure we'll start seeing breakout hits in the social change genre as soon as someone at the top decides social change is profitable. Food, Inc. and Supersize Me would've never gotten funded if it hadn't been for an Inconvenient Truth and Bowling for Columbine. There's always gotta be that first one, so I suppose it's just a matter of wait and see.

Are one sided pieces of propaganda really something to emulate in the game industry?

Ultimately they are simply sophistry, a very skilled filmmaker and put anything in a positive light - look at the original maker of these documentaries - Leni Riefenstahl.

I saw the title of this article and I LOL'ed so hard I couldn't contain myself.

Moore is a proven liar and manipulator. Who will be him in the games industry? What the heck? All suits in the industry who think they can be edgy by producing games "against the system" while sitting on a pile of money ARE MICHAEL MOORE already.

"***Regardless of where one stands on the issues such filmmakers championed***, their effect on documentary filmmaking and their ability to drive ideas around their chosen issues are impossible to ignore."

Typical "progressive" obfuscation. I'll only believe in this part I emphasized the day that filmmakers who even TRY to champion ideas on the other side of the spectrum get even 10% of the recognition Gore and Moore get.

God, why try so hard to hide political sympathies? Be direct and honest about it. If Kubrick did a documentary exalting Objectivism he'd never get the press Moore gets with his lies. This has nothing to do with "their ability to drive" anything.

This article makes me want to puke.

It is kind of vague and buzzwords and hipster gaming business nomenclature-ish.

Be nice if the pipe was put down, and she showed us an actual game.

Based on my own experience, the two designers that come to mind are Ian Bogost and Danny Ledonne.

However, they are not globally known names but they have sparked quite a lot of discussions in the past based on their games.

I do think that more could be done in this space that has not been done. Sure we get the Flash games and a few mobile games every once and a while. However, very few of them get a lot of media attention. I think that is mostly a byproduct of the current view of gaming.

I think there are barriers within the industry as well. A lot of designers and developers do not want to recognize the potential of games. Even here in this thread we have people playing down the ability of games to make social change or raise awareness. Until we can actually embrace alternative game ideas and support those who seek to make change, then it will be a hard road to get such public faces.

Wow, Bradshaw thinks that Michael Moore and Al Gore might be interesting models for mainstream success in documentary media? That's never occurred to anyone, I'm sure, certainly not me. :P

Let's review. Al Gore was VP of the United States and ran the most controversial election in recent memory to become President. Michael Moore released incredibly polarizing and questionably accurate films on hot-button issues *in a medium that celebrates and advances and fucking pays for* that kind of work. Their successes are built on a platform of massive public visibility and considerable funding.

The situation in games is enormously complicated, and related to the market ecosystem, the audience, the kinds of technologies we have developed over the past thirty years, the mechanisms of funding and distribution, the issues of literacy related to games in general and documentary games in particular, the resistance or outright hostility to these sorts of games in BOTH traditional media industries and the games industry, and on and on.

I agree that many (most!) serious games are awful garbage that nobody wants to play. But some of them are made NOT to be mass market media like documentary films, and they have to be understood on those terms. And for those that do have that aspiration, settling on saccharine advice like "be energizing" or "emulate Michael Moore" is hardly useful advice for anybody but a public speaker. Then again, perhaps that's all talks like this are good for.

The Tester already showed us what buffoonery game companies can get up to, thanks.

If you want to change the world, become a politician, not a game designer.

The only game that I can think of that has caused people to change their lives and to get out and interact with the world is America's Army. When the military asked their new recruits what motivated them to join, most recruits cited the game America's Army.

Is that the kind of change that you are looking for?

We'll need an Errol Morris of serious/news games first.

I'd suggest that there are actually two problems for any form of art intended to advocate for some social change: targeting the wrong audience, and a mismatch between the target audience and the tone of the advocate/advocacy.

There appear to be basically three groups you can target with a message:

1. The Believers. These are the people who already agree with you that some social thing is a problem.

2. The Unbelievers. These are the people who do not agree with you that the thing you think is a problem actually is one. (Either they think the effect you perceive is not real, or they also perceive some effect but disagree with you that it is mostly a bad thing.)

3. The Rest. These are the people who either aren't aware of the social condition or do know about it but have no firm opinion on it.

(I suppose there's also a fourth group consisting of people who actually see something as an injustice and like it. But targeting them for persuasion would seem pointless.)

The first problem is that most passionate art seems to be at least half targeted at other Believers and half (if that) at the Rest. This is great for feeling good about your social awareness, but by definition it significantly limits the number of people you can persuade.

For maximum effect, you have to go after the minds that can be changed. I believe that means targeting mostly the Rest plus some Unbelievers. 

You want some Unbelievers to join you because there is no better advocate for something than a converted skeptic. You won't get them all, but the ones you do get will have a lot of value.

And you want lots of the Rest because that's where the masses are. Getting them on your side is what makes change actually happen.

So how do you most effectively communicate to the Unbeliever/Rest subset?

That's the second problem Art For Change has: it goes after the Unbeliever/Rest subset with a message and messenger(s) that only Believers could love.

You are never going to effect real change by throwing red meat to your Believer friends. The sweet spot of the Rest + some Unbelievers will always be turned off by -- and thus reject the message of -- sarcastic-angry agitators like Michael Moore/Aaron Sorkin/Ann Coulter and smarmily condescending mouthpieces like Al Gore/Glenn Beck, all of whom fail by assuming that anyone who doesn't share their worldview must be either stupid or evil.

Who wants to be told that, even indirectly? Why would anyone think that being mocked and belittled would persuade any Unbeliever, or would not disgust any of the Rest?

Instead, if you really want to persuade, here's a radical thought: show some respect for your audience. Treat them like you actually care what they think and want their informed agreement.

In practical terms, that means giving information (and not just the stuff cherry-picked to make you feel good, either) to people who don't agree with you, and then trusting them to make up their own minds. If you're not willing to do that, if you believe that you know what's best for everyone and all must be persuaded to your cause even if you have to lie to them or covertly manipulate them for their own good, then you don't deserve their support and shouldn't be puzzled when you don't get it.

When games for change (and those who speak to the change-gamers) stop holding up nasty and condescending propagandists as models, and start treating non-believers as adults who are capable of making their own decisions when fairly given all the relevant information, that's when real and positive change can happen.

So it seems to me, anyway. I hope I haven't come across as mean or condescending, and I encourage readers to decide for themselves if any of the above is persuasive....

I am sure that in this article, Ms. Bradshaw espouses some sort of opinion, but for the life of me I can't discover it. It seems to me like a long string of extraordinarily softly expressed tautologies.

@Leigh Alexander : thank you for having reported these claims. They echo my own questions. Can you please clarify the context of these transcripts? Where are they from? an event? an article?
I wish I could quote both your article and your source.