By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
Suzanne Seggerman gives the impression that she would be the last person in the world who would play ``Grand Theft Auto,'' one of the bloodiest video games ever made. But indeed, she has played it and quite enjoyed the carjacking experience.
``How great is it to be able to go to GTA and pick up a hood?'' she said jokingly in an interview on Tuesday. ``My carjacking skill has become really good and I can go out and practice on that car.''
She is of course not supporting the violent, fast-action features of it. Instead, she is focusing on the educational aspect of games. Seggerman is the president and co-founder of a non-governmental organization called Game for Change, and is now in Seoul participating in the Daesung Global Contents Forum.
She and her colleagues in New York are trying to persuade firms to make games that can positively change the world. One example is ``Food Force,'' a free computer game made and distributed by the United Nations World Food Program. Aimed at young students, this game encourages players take on missions to distribute food in a famine-affected country and to help it to recover and become self-sufficient. At the same time they learn about hunger in the real world and the U.N.'s work to prevent it.
``I imagine those may lay the groundwork. We might plant a hundred seeds around the world to inspire a new phase of game making,'' she said.
Before being involved in the gaming field, Seggerman was a documentary film producer. It was in 1990 that she was handed a computer diskette from an editor, which contained a Macintosh game named ``Hidden Agenda.''
Unlike popular video games of the time such as the ``Mario Bros'' or ``Donkey Kong,'' the ``Hidden Agenda'' was rather a serious game, dealing with the political situation of an imaginary Central American nation named Chimerica. It was this little game that made her discover the potential of games in educating people.
``I played it for 10 hours straight,'' she said, ``I felt like I learned more about the political situation through that game than by reading newspapers or through other media. It was a different way of interacting with contents. I recognized the power of interaction to engage people in a subject in a way that I haven't seen,''
Seggerman went on more about the potential of education through gaming. She founded Game for Change in 2004, funded mainly by the MacArthur Foundation. It is now holding an annual conference and an award ceremony on social games, which she is happy to hear people call as the Sundance Festival of Video Games.
As they do not produce games by themselves, the mission of Seggerman's organization is to encourage firms to make games that meet the double bottom line -- making money and having a social return at the same time.
``It will be a struggle for a while,'' she said. ``They (companies) are stuck in a model. They continue to make games about things they know will succeed. So they make serial GTAs.''
At least Seggerman and her friends are not only those who believe that games can and should be used in making the world a better place. Microsoft is to work with them in a six-figure deal and the United Nations is also about to make a big announcement on that issue, she said.
With all the financial and organizational support, what is most needed now for the game activists is one huge commercial success, a blockbuster game that can grab the public attention. In other words, they want a computer-game equivalent of ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' Seggerman said, as she prepares for a presentation in front of Korean game developers next day.