Rob Alvarez Bucholska
0

Drew Davidson Strengthening Creative Playful Teams | Episode 361

If you’re struggling to keep people engaged and loyal in your product or business, check out my FREE gamification course to learn how to do just that: bit.ly/freegamificationcourse-web

A unique perspective on how combining diverse fields can lead to innovative and socially impactful projects, shedding light on the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in developing interactive media. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in enhancing user engagement through creative and collaborative approaches, whether in educational settings or business applications.

Drew Davidson is a professor, producer and player of interactive media. His background spans academic, industry and professional worlds and he is interested in stories and transformational experiences across texts, comics, games and other media. He explores the art, design, and science of making media that matters, working to expand our notions of what media are capable of doing, and what we are capable of doing with media. He is an expert in leading creative collaborations with interdisciplinary groups, orchestrating change, and building initiatives focused on making positive social impact. He is a Teaching Professor at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University and is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Play Story Press, an open community publishing consortium, and the Well Played series and journal.

Rob is a host and consultant at Professor Game as well as an expert, international speaker and advocate for the use of gamification and games-based solutions, especially in education and learning. He’s also a professor and workshop facilitator for the topics of the podcast and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY (LSP) for top higher education institutions that include EFMD, IE Business School and EBS among others in Europe, America and Asia.

 

Guest Links and Info

 

Links to episode mentions:

 

Lets’s do stuff together!

Looking forward to reading or hearing from you,

Rob

 

Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

Rob:
Hey, this is Professor Game, where we interview successful practitioners of games, gamification and game thinking to help us multiply engagement and loyalty. I’m Rob Alvarez, a consultant and the founder of Professor Game and a professor of gamification and games based solutions at IE business School, EFMD, EBS University, and other places around the world. And before we dive into the interview, if you’re struggling with engagement in your business and are looking to find out how to make sure your users stay with you, perhaps you will find our free gamification course useful. Find it for free in the links, in the description. Hey, engagers, and welcome back to another episode of the Professor Game podcast. And today we are with Drew. But Drew, we need to know, are you prepared to engage?

Drew Davidson:
Yes.

Rob:
Let’s do this. Let’s go. Because Drew is a professor, producer, and player of interactive media, and he has a background through academic, industry, and professional worlds. And he is a interested in stories and transformational experiences across text, comics, games and other media, where he explores arts, design and science, of making media that matters, working to expand our notions of what media are capable of doing and what we’re capable of doing with media. He’s an expert in leading creative collaborations with interdisciplinary groups, orchestrating change, and building initiatives focused on making positive social impact. And he is a teaching professor at the Entertainment Technology center at Carnegie Mellon University and is the founder and editor in chief of Play Story Press, an open community publishing consortium, as well as a well played series in journal. So a lot of stuff going on at this point, right? Anything we’re missing from that intro that we should know before we go on?

Drew Davidson:
No, I think I got the high notes for sure.

Rob:
That’s good. That’s good. So you mentioned in the pre interview that you’re on a sabbatical right now. So maybe now, maybe from before, or maybe. What are you planning to have as a regular day once the sabbatical ends? Or. Right now, we want to sort of be in your shoes for a bit, just to have a feel of what the stuff you’re doing looks like.

Drew Davidson:
Yeah. So I’ll start with sabbatical, and then kind of like on the sabbatical, it’s this wonderful, sort of like a chance as a professor to spend a lot of dedicated time doing a project. And so what I was doing is I had this idea to do a study, just talking to people from all around the world, from a variety of fields, just anybody who felt like their work, their interests, their life related to play. And so that’s just been inspirational. Just talking to a variety of people through there, from, like, musicians to athletes to, of course, game designers and, you know, academics who are curious in games and play and child psychologists who do play therapy and, you know, just this huge range. It’s made people out of theme parks. It’s been really fun. So, like, a normal day, sort of. Like, there are a couple places where I have colleagues where I have been hanging out at museums and at tech offices and media companies here in town just to chat with people and be around stuff and also just do work. But I’ve done a lot of sitting down on Zoom because I was using Zoom just to help record and transcribe the interviews. So a big part of that is just sort of like, doing the interviews and then reading them and things like that. And then more broadly, as I, you know, back into, like, the more normal part of my life as a professor. Spend a lot of time on a, like, getting in, chatting with colleagues. Like, the entertainment technology center is very project based. So we had. It’s a graduate program for those of people who might not know. It was. Goodness gracious, it’s almost 25 years old. I’ve been around, like, 22, 23 years now. And it was founded out of Carnegie Mellon’s computer science and College of Fine Arts. One of the founders was Don Marinelli, out of drama and fine arts, and the other was Randy Pausch, out of computer science, who got somewhat famous for his last lecture that a lot of people have seen. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a very inspirational talk, and I highly recommend you, like, get on YouTube and find it. It’s really well done. Carnegie Mellon just did a remaster, so it’s. The quality has been really improved from the talk. It’s like 15 some odd years ago now. So, anyways, that context is like, we have grad students from all over the world coming in there. Programmers, artists, designers, musicians, people with business backgrounds. We put them together on teams, and they make things. So a big part of faculty members day there is meeting with the students as individuals, but also these project teams that might be working on something for a client externally, whether it’s for profit, nonprofit, or, you know, based on research, or committing your own idea, pitching it, or faculty’s research idea as well. So you get together and the sort of head fake. Randy talks a lot about head fakes in his last lecture is it’s less about what they’re making and more about how they’re making it. And so it’s really easy for us as people to kind of go, okay, what’s the game? Or the virtual reality experience or the thing on mobile? And that is an artifact that they’re going to get graded on and looked at. But what we really care about is, like, the process that they go through to make it together. So the big part of it is sort of like, all right, you’re working with people, and that can be challenging, and you’ll have different opinions and different ideas, and people can suck. And so that’s almost like the universal thing is, like, if you got a group of people working together, there’s gonna be communication challenges and opportunities, just scheduling people, caring about different things, you know, a client who just doesn’t like what you’re doing. So all of that together is a big part of what we help sort of support the teams and students through is how to step up as professional and assume responsibility for their role on these teams. And if you’re doing creative work, I always like to say, you don’t really know the end result. I mean, if you know exactly where you’re going and how to get there, then I’d say you’re not doing anything creative at all. And so it’s as they sort of try to figure out and iterate through ideas and play test with, you know, demographics and focus groups just to see how it’s going. That’s a big part of what we do, is meet the teams. And then, you know, stuff like, just a lot of times, the email, a lot of meetings, a lot of chatting with colleagues, looking at both colleagues who are in other schools or around Carnegie Mellon, and ways that we can collaborate and talking about things we’re doing together to colleagues out in the industry, whether it’s to help talk about students or what, you know, what’s going on in the industry and help them, you know, hire students or, you know, think about ways that they can learn from how we do the stuff we do, and vice versa. We’re very open and interested in talking to the industry and seeing what’s going on and how that can be folded into our curriculum so that our students have as close to a real world context within the, you know, boundaries of being an academic program. And then, like, a big part is, I’m sure you’re familiar with this, and a lot of visitors is like, you attend events, whether it’s a conference or a festival. And so it’s a big part of, like, thinking, like, just, I’ve had two meetings this week on two different conferences or festivals, just sort of like, as people are like, well, what can we do? And how do we pull together an event that people would want to pay to attend? So that’s a lot of meetings. It’s definitely white collar work where I spend a lot of time on computer and a lot of time in front of a screen. But then it’s really fun to get hands on with all these project teams and stuff and get out and about and see what other people are doing. That’s really inspiring.

Rob:
So let’s take it from there. Actually, those creative teams, when involving, as you were saying, play and that kind of stuff in your work, we would like to be on a story with you, actually, a concrete story. You don’t have to name any names. No shaming is necessary. It’s welcome, but it’s not necessary anyway, where things actually did not go your way. So it was what we’d like to call a first attempt at learning or a fail moment. We want to be there with you. We want to take any lessons we can take, you know, that kind of stuff.

Drew Davidson:
Hmm. Trying to think of a good one. There’s so many failures, I think. Well, one project I really like, because it ended up being a really powerful success, was we were doing a collaboration with a group out of New York City called the Theater of War. And long story short, they do performative readings of classic greek tragedies. At least initially, they did it for soldiers. They’ve also done it now for, like, medical professionals and stuff. And the idea is, being exposed to these wonderfully powerful, overly emotional stories being read by professional actors and actresses would get them to be the starting moment to sort of see that as an experience of that, and then afterwards have a facilitated discussion around the themes that were in the piece, in that tragedy or something. And they were finding that it really helped soldiers unlock and talk about the PTSD in ways that they might not have prior. And so they came to us. We were sort of chat, chatting about a collaboration, and one of the biggest challenges they were facing is like, well, you know, about the biggest group we can do this for is about 150. So it’s really hard to scale. And there’s so many people that could benefit from this. They’re thinking about ways to make it scale. So at first, we were working the team and the client in the theater of war. We’re working, thinking about, well, maybe virtual reality, and this is ten plus years ago now to just when, like, the oculus was coming out with their headsets publicly, they were available, so just to give you a sense of the quality. And so they were like, well, maybe headsets, because then you could watch it and you’d feel like you were there. And that, you know, that way we could sort of scale and just send people out as they were sort of playtesting. And it got a lot of traction. Cause headsets were kind of coming back, and everybody’s like, okay, VR, here’s the next wave of it. And two things that sort of came out that were sort of like, the failure part of it was, well, one at the time, and it’s still, you know, people need to have a headset. So not everybody has a headset. Even, you know, it hasn’t really broke big where, like, everybody has a smartphone, not everybody has a headset around. So there was a bit of that of like, well, how do we get things to people? And that would require money and maintenance and some it expertise and stuff like that. So there were some adding in, and then the other thing they started thinking about as we were exploring an idea initially was like, well, they kept talking about how the powerful thing was the conversation after the performance. And that’s. At the time, it was like, there’s not much social happening in VR, and so it feels like you’re trying to have a facilitated event where then they take the headsets off so that somebody’s helping do the discussion, you know, or, you know, at the time, it’s like networks, online, multiplayer, and a headset’s not happening really well. And even now, it’s still, like, kind of there. I mean, and then the pandemic happened, and it’s like, whoa, how do. How do we feel like we’re sharing space together, our headsets, the way. How do we. You know, everybody was trying to correct that, so the team started pitching, and so we were kind of getting down to where, like, this might not be the answer. It doesn’t look like VR is going to work. And there was a lot of investment just because it seemed like an idea there. And at the time, there was like, well, there’s grant money around mental health and wellbeing, that maybe if we attach it to a headset, it’s sort of like, it’s technology for medical. But the team pitched them this idea of, like, well, he kept talking about how the conversations were so important, so they pitched them a board game that they could play together, and there would be a board game that had an app associated with it, a smartphone app, so Android or iPhone. And the idea was the readings would still be performed, but they would be recorded on the app, and then the app would help them then play this game around the board where they got to the. They did this clever job with the mechanics, so you’d listen. Then there’s these ways that, as you were moving around the board, it encouraged you to discuss what you had heard, or you would get tokens to, like, be able to pass if it made you too uncomfortable or, like, tokens to even, you know, oh, my God, this is so powerful. But I want to second what that person said. Like, amen to that. And so you can, like, lay down a card to, like, sort of, like, double down on the sentiment express. And so, like, out of this idea of, like, oh, God, we’re going down this alley that doesn’t seem to work. All of a sudden, this left turn of, like, well, maybe it’s a board game, because if you’re sitting around a table, you’re naturally going to talk. And if you put it on the app, you can have a lot of. Instead of having to have an expert and a programmer there or, you know, an expert facilitator there to make sure the conversation’s happened, the app could really help guide the discussion with prompts. And it just took off, and we were all sort of crazy surprised by how well it went. And so that’s, like, part of it’s just, like, iterating. And that’s the thing. Like I was saying at the top, you know, if you’re doing something creative, you might not know what you need to do while you’re in the process. And so it’s like. And that’s something I love.

Rob:
I love about that story. Right? It’s. It’s, you know, failure, as we’ve discussed many times on the podcast, fail is not final. It’s not fatal. You know, it’s. It’s not the end of the world. It’s just you hit a dead end, and you turn back and look at what are other options, what are other roads you can take to achieve this? Because you’re in love with solving a certain problem that you guys have. And the beauty of this is you not only got there and got to a point where we were standing on top of the wave of the trend of VR at the time, and you said, look, this is not the answer. We’re going back to something else. We’re going back to board games with apps. Apps have also been around for quite a while. Fantastic. I love that story. Thank you very much for sharing that, Drew. And I don’t know if you want to stick to that one or go into something else where things eventually became a success. This one is evidently a story of success. As you were sharing, we want to again be there with you and perhaps look at some of the success factors that might have been present in that situation.

Drew Davidson:
Yeah, I think getting at what you’re saying, how failure is not final or fatal. One of the things all of our students do is they’re required to go through improvisational acting before they get on these semester long projects like this. It came out of the genesis of the program, and it was inspired by Ed Catmull from Pixar. When Don and Randy were starting up the program, they were visiting people in the industry going, all right, we want to do this thing. It’s going to be geared towards the creative industries, so the etc. Rewards. A master’s in entertainment technology helps us tell people what we’re not. It’s like, oh, it’s not a technical degree. That’s a master’s of science. It’s not an MFA or fine arts. And you’re not just writing papers like an MA, and it’s kind of like an MBA. It’s focused on the industry, whereas MBA is more, you know, management, finances, where the design and development. And so they were visiting companies and they visited Pixar, and Ed Cattle’s like, have everybody take improv because they’ll have to, you know, they’ll have to check their egos at the door. And it really helped from his perspective, what he’s pitching was really helps, you know, teams become closer and more open and trusting of each other. And so they develop a respect by. And so they got a professor. Her name is Brenda Harger, and she’d be great if you want to interview somebody who’s fun. So she’s taught this class for the entirety of the existence of the program, where everybody goes through. And it’s not about becoming a better actor or actress. It’s about that whole. Yes. And philosophy and the paradigm of thinking about how you share credit and share ideas and build on these things together, making your partner look good. And we hope it would translate outside of the class where they’re doing things in a room together. And you’re, when you’re up on stage trying to, you know, improv with somebody, it’s visceral. If things are going well or if things are like, oh, my God. But we hope it then kind of like, translates forward. It’s like, you know, with improv, it’s like, serve the narrative. What makes the story go well? How do you. Yes. And what’s going on? And then how does that translate into, I’m working on a project where they have these goals. That is the narrative, and how do we keep trying to do different things? So hopefully that gets people into a mindset where they’re very open and comfortable kind of go, let’s try this. Let’s try this, and let’s try this and not be. Get locked in and kind of feel like, well, I have to hang on to this idea because we’ve already started, as opposed to like, well, the idea is not working. Let’s try something new and really try to support each other through it as they work their way through the process.

Rob:
Nice, nice improv for getting people to move around. And. And also, it’s like the two things, right? You’re getting two things together. It’s about just coming up with things, but it’s also coming up with things together. It’s, you’re respecting the rest of the people in the room, which is great. One of the things I love to do. And it was almost a couple, well over two years ago that we underwent the Lego series play training. One of the objectives is precisely that everybody in the room has a say because it’s part of the methodology. Like, there’s no way you don’t have a say in what’s going on. Right. And that’s a clever way as well to do it through fine arts, as you were saying. As you were saying before. Right. Love it. Thank you for sharing that as well, Drew. And if you were to come up with a solution for a problem like the ones you’ve been discussing. Right. You mentioned before, the one that you were the solution that they were doing of performing plays and then having these discussions. So things that you would like to solve through, call it playfulness, game design, creative solutions around these concepts, whatever you want to call it. Do you follow some method? I mean, I’m guessing that when you teach them, it’s like, well, do these things and at least you have a shot at not the result. Right. But how does maybe thinking about this get you to move forward in it in some direction, at least?

Drew Davidson:
Yeah, there are a couple things. Like, one of our professors is Jesse Shell, who runs Shell games, and he has a really great game design textbook, the Art of game design. Similarly, we also have an alum named Sabrina Selva, who’s written a book called the Transformational Framework. And a great, like Jesse’s book is game design writ large and really working through the process. And it’s great. It has a deck of cards along with it to help it make a very playful experience as you work your way through the eye, sort of like the foundations of how to think about game design. And then Sabrina’s book, the transformational Framework, does a great job showing you what you should consider if you want to do something educational or have some sort of what we would call transformational impact above and beyond. Just, I played it and enjoyed it. So whether that’s educational or like civic engagement or just raising awareness or medical. And so for us, that’s sort of like getting the team to start thinking about things implicitly from the start with all the stakeholders involved. There’s like that classic sort of waterfall model of like somebody’s got some funding and they want to fund, you know, games to help kids, not start smoking, totally brainstorming, you know, and they’re like, well, we need to find people who know and make games and we need some academics who can help do the studies. And you sort of work your way down and then it’s like, okay, now we’re gonna get the game in front of kids. And sometimes like, the kids are getting like soaking wet at the bottom of the waterfall from everybody’s good intentions as they work their way down. And we find it much more better from the start to be really co creative and get everybody together. So it’s like, it’s a game for kids that you want in school. You better have teachers on board so they understand because they’re the ones who’s going to make it happen or not. You know, like, we’ve done some projects with school districts where it was like the superintendent and the principal were like, we want to do this, and the teachers were like, oh, God, something else. Our jobs are hard and, you know, you’re giving us a, something that’s going to be a burden on top of everything else. And so it took time, like almost a whole year of just sort of like really being transparent and upfront about, no, we’re only going to do this with you, and if it doesn’t happen with you, it’s just not going to happen. And the same token, even though the teachers were kind of like the, if it’s going to be in a school district, you know, the teachers got to make, it’s the kids that are going to be playing it. So we’re play testing it a lot with the students, whether it’s k through twelve or, you know, somewhere in that range, you know, so it’s like getting their input, you know, to make sure you have it, you know, aged appropriately, scaffolded appropriately for their, like, one time we did a. We had a team doing something for, I think, first to third grade and one. And they were trying to use iPads or, like, an Android pad, and they found out, like, first graders, the pad was just heavy enough that it was tiring for them to hold it while they were standing up. And third graders didn’t even think about it being tiring, you know, so it was just even that close to age range, just developmentally, there was that weird little thing of like, oh, we’re doing iPads. Oh, they’re getting tired, so they’re putting the iPads down and not using it. And so it’s like that kind of, like, get everybody together and then really start working. Like, we really preach playtesting. It’s like paper prototyping, thinking of your ideas, brainstorming, like, building on that. That improvisational paradigm of, like, yes, ending the ideas together as you work your way together and, like, pitch your idea to client or the faculty or, you know, and always, inevitably, we’d have, like, some team that’ll be like, oh, my God, we have the wrong students who came and tested this, our product. We need better students. And we’re like, well, it’s not their fault. You know, some user you were testing, and they don’t get it. Really try to learn from that because it’s not because they were the wrong people. You can get a lot of useful stuff out of it. And so we try to help our students understand that that can be generative, like, lead them towards the next better idea as opposed to, you know, oh, I have to stop and do everything all over. So really trying to get them comfortable with that idea of, like, iterating, collaborating, and then, like, on the one hand, it’s really powerful. On the other hand, every other person in the mix is another level of complexity. It’s like, so we’re talking to the teachers. We’re talking to, oh, and it’s an after school thing, so parents want to weigh, you know, parents are going to care or something. You know, it’s like, let’s get all those in, and, oh, somebody’s funding it. Well, we need to pass something that the funder goes, oh, yay, I’m glad that did something useful in the world, you know?

Rob:
Totally, totally.

Drew Davidson:
And then there’s always somebody who’s like, can you make it green? Why is it blue?

Rob:
You know, it’s part of the feedback.

Drew Davidson:
Right, right. So that that’s like, really being open and, like, weekly meetings. Regular meetings. Hash it out anyways.

Rob:
No. And having everybody already on board these multidisciplinary teams, it’s something that’s talked about maybe a bit too much for how much it’s actually being used, in my opinion, in my experience, at least. But seeing that you’re some of the ones who are pushing people back into the industry after this, hopefully it’s part of that generating force where this kind of thing will be more and more common ground, where you’re really thinking about this. I remember working many years ago in Procter and gamble, and there’s these multidisciplinary teams all that long ago, and it was working really well. I don’t know if they’re still doing it or not, but it worked really, really well. I’m just surprised that we’re still talking about it as this something that is sort of innovative and not implementing it as much as possible. And again, not to say Proctor was this great thing. It’s just, they did it. It worked. I’m sure they talked about it. Everybody knew that they were doing it. What are other, you know, companies, organizations waiting for this kind of. Kind of approach, but good, great to see that you’re part of that as well. And, Drew, is there any sort of, like, that kind of tip or, you know, not silver bullet, for sure, but that thing where you say, well, if you do this, when you’re creating, you’re making your creations or these projects, it’ll be at least a little bit better if you, I don’t know, think about it this way or always do playtesting, for example. That’s, like, a bit generic, but, like, if you do this thing, you know, maybe it’s always. Maybe it’s always gonna be at least a little bit better. Right. Sort of a best practice, maybe.

Drew Davidson:
I like it. Kind of reminds me, there’s a book I read somewhat recently called thinking in bets, and it was just about how, you know, we. We live in uncertainty. And, you know, the woman, she’s a professor, I think. I think she’s in Pennsylvania. I’m not sure where she’s based right now. She might be a duke. Anyway, I think I heard that book.

Rob:
Recently, and she was a poker player or something like that.

Drew Davidson:
Yes, exactly. So she was using poker as a lens to think about uncertainty and ways to make smart decisions when you just. You really kind of. You’re making decisions based on not having all the information involved, but a lot. And a great point that came out of the book is that, like, you can go through the good process and still lose and still fail, but the good process in general is what’s going to keep you having successes across time and a big mistake that we make. Humans will be like, oh, God, we hired the wrong CEO. We did it wrong. And they’re like, no, you did everything right. Just happenstance. You got a CEO who wasn’t a fit. And so it’s like having the comfort to keep committing to, like, okay, let’s try. Okay, it’s not working, but we’ll play test. Like I was saying, it’s like the, how you do it becomes really important. So like, you’re supportive and engaged and discussing as opposed to, well, I’m just going to take over and tell everybody what to do because I can so solve it. And then the next thing you know, that might fall, might work that time, but then it’s become less of a collaborative thing and more about, there’s somebody who’s obviously the boss. And, you know, and a lot of people joke, slash, it’s just a fact of life, of anytime you’re in the creative industries, whether it’s making games or films or, you know, writing, you know, there’s the, the people who are doing the creative work and the people who really care about budgets and spreadsheets and staying on time and that, like, the tensions therein of, I need this to hit by the holiday season and it better be big. You know, like Sony just had that huge thing where they, the game I’m liking on the name, it starts with the c, the game they just had to pull after, after just like four or five weeks. But they were hoping it would be like the name next iteration of something that would be as popular as Star wars. And it just kind of fizzled.

Rob:
And everybody who did the work on.

Drew Davidson:
It, they did just as much work as somebody who did work on a project that went well. You know, takes just as much work to make a bad game as it does a good game or successful game as opposed to a game that doesn’t quite click.

Rob:
Totally, totally. And drew, you started on with recommendations. How about, is there a person that you would like to listen to or see on an interview like this one, answering these questions, giving these recommendations, somebody that maybe makes you curious to see what their thoughts are on these things?

Drew Davidson:
Yeah. Some of the people I mentioned I just know so well and I think very highly, like, you know, the professors who is improv. Brenda Harger is amazing. Jesse Schell, really dynamic speaker. Sabrina Silva’s brilliant. They’re all great. And I was trying to think of people who I’d love to hear, like, I think it’s really interesting in this type of context of like, okay, here’s what this podcast is and here’s what we’re trying to do. Like, we’re, my wife and I were just talking the other night on PBS here stateside. We watched something called the expressway starring Dule Hill, the actor. And it was really focused around arts and activism and marginalized, underserved, underrepresented communities, diverse, you know, and it was just inspiring and amazing. And so I love stuff like that where you find somebody. It made me think a lot about how I’d want to think about doing interactive game type work differently or topics I could tackle or things like that, ways we could do it. And so sometimes it’s fun to, like, could we go outside our current community and find somebody that might bring some ideas in that surprise us in ways that would really get us going in new ways? It can be fun just as much as, oh, I can guarantee Jesse Shell will be a good interview.

Rob:
Totally, totally. And in fact, Jesse Shell is a past guest. I have to check exactly which episode it was, but he was around episode 100. I’m not exactly sure if it was actually 100 or it was close to that, but actually, let me check it here. He was episode 102, in fact.

Drew Davidson:
Yeah, you go, right?

Rob:
Jesse Schell, totally great, fantastic guest, fantastic book. And in that sense as well, maybe you have a book of the many that you’ve mentioned that you would like to recommend are engaged.

Drew Davidson:
I feel funny. I’m so old fashioned because I like to read so much. Like, thinking in bets was really fun. One of the books that’s really got me thinking about just the world in general is braiding sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmer. She’s a native american scientist here, and she just does this wonderful job showing how native indigenous knowledge across eons is now being proven by science to be very effective and accurate. But the history is sort of like, oh, well, that’s just, you know, your stories are telling, praying to the gods. Yeah. Easy to discount when it’s like the western scientific method kind of going well, hold on a second. But so she’s done a great job showing how weaving them together is very generative. And that’s made me think a lot about ways to think about sort of like science education, you know, science awareness and just getting people more interested in like, the wonder of what’s going on around us as opposed to the, you know, sometimes it’s like stem and you have to get a job. And that’s all true and all good, but it’s also just like, you know, this can crack open the world and how we live in a crazy, amazing place. There’s so much we don’t know. Our whole lives could be filled with, you know, understanding things better.

Rob:
Drew, what would you say? Is your superpower a thing that you do at least better than most other people who.

Drew Davidson:
Well, I’ll give two answers. We were joking because one time we had something, we’re like, okay. And somebody said my superpower would be. They gave me the name relax, man. Like, you’d be relax, man. Because you call it calm everybody down. You just. Your presence, and we’re joking. He’s like, you know, and I think that is true. Like, in situations where, you know, because creative work can be intense, you know, like, you have a deadline and stuff like that, and people are getting together, and, you know, things aren’t working. So it can feel. You can feel the pressure. And so sometimes it’s like, well, let’s take a step back. Let’s think about it. Let’s work out. It’s, you know, like you said, failure is not fatal and it’s not final. But at the time, you might be like, it’s all over. And so, like, really helping people kind of just take a breath and go, I think, is a big part. And then that type of, like, building on that a little bit more. Just helping people understand how to communicate across topic areas and across discipline expertise and even across cultural differences is something I really try to aspire to do as best as I can and do better. I know it surprises. We have a huge international student population at Carnegie Mellon, and a lot of the faculty work really hard to go get their names and get their names correctly and stuff like that. And you can tell it means so much to students to have their name pronounced correctly and that you remember it, you know, which I joke with them, like, here’s how low the bar is. If you’re just polite, you’ll stand out. You know, just be polite and be a conscientious person, and people will remember you because it’s so rare.

Rob:
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. Now we get to a difficult one or almost. Last question. What would you say is your favorite game?

Drew Davidson:
Whoa. All timer. Recently, your pick. My pick? What’s so funny? Because I just announced a call that I helped. I started this journal called well played around the idea of doing deep readings, as it were, deep playings of games and really analyzing the gameplay experience and what inspired me to do that. The latest call for the next issue of the journal is around what we call for the love of games, that game or game series or that just, you know, is the one that got you into all of this and is like, that touch tone for you, whatever that game may be. And so when I was thinking about it, it’s less a game for me. I don’t know if I have time to write this, but I hope I do. And more a mechanic. Like, I just find it fascinating. Like, from the inception of, like, Sokoban as a puzzle game, a lot of us are familiar with, you know, pushing blocks within a physical territory that defines where you can push the block. And you have to, like, there comes all the puzzling. Like, it’s a different space. You got to get the block out the door or into the chute or. I think Sokobahn at first was like a warehouse type game. You’re pushing crates around, and now people have just spun it out into all kinds of variants, whether it’s the theming or different little tweaks in mechanics. Like, there was a great one called Red’s kingdom that’s sort of like Zelda like in its storytelling, but it’s all about a kingdom of squirrels collecting the magic nuts. And it was just really cute, but then it was really kind of, like, had at its core, Sokoba mechanics. And then similarly, I’m blanking on the name of it. I have it on my phone, I’ll tell you. Slay away camp. Another little sort of Soka von like game where you play. You play the Freddy Krueger and you have to maze your way through the levels in the forest to get to the, you know, the campers that you’re going to slay. And it’s. And they do a nice thing where it’s let. They kind of take the edge off the sort of like, well, hold on a second. I’m the killer to like, well, no, no, it’s like. It’s literally, you’re watching movies, you know, like, the levels are like, pull out the VHS s tape, stick it in. Now you’re going into a level where you’re the killer. So you’re sort of, like, just performing a role. I thought they did some clever things to sort of mitigate, like, oh, this is terribly violent to go like, well, hold on. It’s just, you know, an homage to eighties horror movies where you’re playing the role of the killer and they’re all, you know. So I got really fascinated by that. And that was something. Ever since I announced the call, I’ve been thinking about is like, could I do something where I really just unpacked that mechanic and how it sort of spun out in so many. Like, there’s a sausage party, I think Steven sausage. There’s just so many that are, like, hard or elegant or, you know, relaxing, you know. So it’s just fascinating to me to think about the way something that at one point really boiled down to it’s just a pushing blocks mechanic with, you know, sort of defining movement around a space to blow up into this wide variety of different types of experiences you can have. Cool. Cool.

Rob:
So, Drew, we’re arriving to the end of the interview. Where can we find out more about you, your work, or anything else you want to say or lead us to?

Drew Davidson:
Yeah, so, like, any curiosity about what’s going on at Carnegie Mellon, the email. I mean, the address, I’m happy to share it so you can write it out under stuff as etc. Dot cmu.edu my personal website is drew at wax waxb.com. w ax eb like the moon waxes, the tide ebbs. The press I started this past year, just this open publishing consortium. It’s called Play story press. All the above are different ways you can find me. Like I’m on LinkedIn. I don’t do social media because I’m old, but that’s where you can kind of find me.

Rob:
Great having you around, Drew. This has been a very insightful conversation. I’m sure many of the ideas that you’ve spun here, a lot of the experience that you’ve had has inspired many of the engagers in the audience. However, drew and engagers, as you know, at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it’s game over.

Drew Davidson:
Hey, engagers.

Rob:
And thank you for listening to the Professor Game podcast. And since you are into gamification and game inspired solutions, how about you go into the free gamification course that we have for you? Just go to professorgame.com freegamification work course. All one word, professorgame.com freegamificationcourse, and get started today for free. After that, we will also be in contact and you will be the first to know of any opportunities that Professor K might have for you. And remember, before you go on to your next mission, before you click continue, please remember to subscribe using your favorite podcast app and listen to the next episode of Professor Game. See you there.

End of transcription