Publication
Video games are the new soft power 💪
Last week I had the opportunity to speak in Khanty-Mansiysk at the VIII International Conference “Information and Communication in the Digital Age,” which was held as part of the IT Forum and the UNESCO Information for All program.
Video games are the new soft power 💪
Last week I had the opportunity to speak in Khanty-Mansiysk at the VIII International Conference “Information and Communication in the Digital Age,” which was held as part of the IT Forum and the UNESCO Information for All program.
Thank you for the invitation to the Russian Committee of the UNESCO Information for All Program - it was nice to see that video games are finally being talked about not only within the industry, but also on large international platforms alongside discussions of AI, digital culture and the future of creative industries.
Participated in a session about games, AR/VR and the digital economy. And once again I caught myself thinking that games are still underestimated by many people.
🎮 First of all, games are literally the frontier of technology. It's funny, but the entire modern AI boom largely rests on the shoulders of game developers. The same NVIDIA GPUs on which LLMs and generative models are trained today grew out of a long-standing race for graphics, FPS and rendering. We can say that current AI, in a sense, rides on the legacy of the gaming industry.
🎮 Secondly, games are a powerful tool for soft power and popularization of culture. At the session, a perhaps slightly provocative thought was voiced: in order for Russian culture to appear more often in games, it needs to... be made more convenient for developers. Developers, like all people, often choose the path of least resistance. If high-quality assets, references, architecture, ornaments and cultural artifacts about Russia are easily accessible, the chance of seeing them in international projects will increase significantly.
🎮 Another important thesis is that games have long been more than just games.
Game mechanics live well outside of Steam and consoles: corporate training, HR, education, simulations, gamification of user experience. Sometimes friendship with corporations for gaming teams is not a compromise, but a completely workable path to a sustainable business.
A more controversial thesis was also discussed: games as a way to show young people the consequences of their decisions. I am cautious about this idea, but there is some truth in it. Interactivity provides something that lectures and presentations do not provide: the opportunity to live the consequences of your own actions, and not just hear about them 😩
In general, I was once again convinced: when we talk about games, we are actually talking not only about entertainment. We are talking about technology, culture, education, economics and how the digital society will be structured in the coming years. So let's keep diving!
And if you are also thinking about or doing a video game project right now from the eyes of a corporation - let me know! 🤫