“Commercializing serious content won’t work by creating a [single] game. I think we’ll have to look at ways that we can push, prod, join and collaborate with existing commercial development to think about ways that we can include social messaging and other types of hooks into things we’re already doing, instead of recreating an entire industry from scratch.”
The idea, basically, is that you can make games "serious" without making new ones. This article I recently found illustrates a fab example of that-- soldiers in rehab at Walter Reed medical center are using games as therapy. They play PS3 at the hospital (the Guitar Heroist in the photo is Army Spec Juan Alcibar)-- apparently it's legitimately both physically and psychologically therapeutic. An organization called Soldiers' Angels has been buying and distributing DS systems for recouping soldiers nationwide. Patti Patton-Bader, who founded Soldiers' Angels, likes Brain Age in particular. ""If there's been a strain on the brain, it helps them recover quicker," she says. "I can't say enough good things about handheld games."
As I've said recently, the idea of games becoming a part of our society on many levels (and not simply entertainment) is an appealing one, but generally those motivated to expand in those arenas could afford to learn more about gaming. So until then, it's heartening to see (yet another) a solid example of "games for a good cause" that doesn't rely on designing entirely new ones.
