Former Vice President Al Gore spoke yesterday at the Games for Change conference at New York University and commended games as having "arrived as a mass medium." He singled out social games like Farmville as promoting cooperation over competition and seemed pleased that similar games were gaining momentum over "the lowest common denominator games."
"This is a very large, extremely significant industry with a wildly diverse and rapidly-growing audience of players on all kinds of platforms. We already know the immense power of popular media to illuminate issues that can seem intractable and overly-complex, but can be illuminated and presented to general audiences in a way that invites people to become involved in trying to solve the problems that our society has to solve."
Gore has spent recent years advocating environmental issues, funding green industries, winning a Nobel Peace Prize and making An Inconvenient Truth, which won two Academy Awards. It's not surprising that games that tackle ecological problems catch his eye.
"I've been encouraged by recent developments like Trash Tycoon and Oceanopolis, and both have spurred my thinking in this area. In closing, I want to say that I'd love to work with any teams that are interested in making games that are focused on solutions to the climate crisis. I look forward to getting to know this community better," Gore said.
Seeing Al Gore's name in the credits of a Facebook game? Stranger things have happened.
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