Don't Shoot the Player While They're Learning

Designers of all kinds are key players in the game of change that so typifies the opening decades of the 21st century. Called on to imagine, build, guide, demystify, explain, provoke, enable and inspire, game designers deal daily in the currency of transformation—of places, practices, and perspectives. Play is a key strategy in developing a design practice that is agile enough to entertain a constant need for transformative thinking but substantive enough to throw its strategic weight around when needed. This talk will delve into a set of tasty truisms gleaned from professional game designers about what happens to play when approached from the perspective of learning. What they have to say will both surprise and inform.