TEDxMelbourne – The Need for Games Literacy

This is the slides and a transcript of the talk I gave at the TEDxMelbourne event at the State Library of Victoria on July 19, 2011.

If you’re anything like me, the two words games and literacy don’t really belong together. In my head they feel a little bit like 2 magnets vibrating as they try to repel each other, and I suspect it’s the same for many of you.

What I want to talk to you about this evening is not only how they do go together, but why it’s important that they do, as well as taking a look at the innovations that have made that necessary.

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Critical failure…

The Wheeler Centre here in Melbourne recently ran a series of panels under the banner of ‘Critical Failure‘. These took in film, books, theatre, and the visual arts, and were designed to promote debate.  And promote debate they did, with it spilling out of the Wheeler Centre and across the internet on Crikey, the ABC, in the Guardian, and on blogs.

I think these debates are incredibly interesting, both because they reveal the huge schism between those critics working in traditional print media and those working online (and, in fact, their opinions of online), and also because of what you can learn from them about criticism and how it might relate to games and the broader culture.

Click through for my thoughts…

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