Looking Outwards 08

For this week’s Looking Outwards post I want to introduce video game designer, artist, professor, and writer Lindsay Grace. He is best known as an academic game designer who employs critical design. He currently is a professor at the University of Miami. The part I admire most about Lindsay is his creative use of interactive media and games to explore cultural standards. He is able to design games that are purpose-driven, that includes games that focus on education, social phenomenon, news, etc. A strategy he uses is using cute/simple graphics to represent serious topics like mental health issues, slavery, and environmental waste. He describes this great contrast in his video games as “reminding us the tension in the things we enjoy.” I think this is really effective because every time when we learn about serious subjects we always set the tone to be stern and serious and that would lose the users’ interest easily. On the other hand, if we approach it in a more casual and lighthearted way, it wouldn’t necessarily make the users forget the seriousness of the subject matter but better educate them by having their attention first. 

This is the set of games Lindsay mentioned in his lecture.

Link to Lindsay Grace’s website: http://professorgrace.com/
Link to lecture video: https://vimeo.com/channels/eyeo2018/page:4