TED Talks
Jane McGonigal: Gaming can make a better world
Games like World of Warcraft give players the means to save worlds, and incentive to learn the habits of heroes. What if we could harness this gamer power to solve real-world problems? Jane McGonigal says we can, and explains how.
TED Talks
Will Wright: Spore, birth of a game
In a friendly, high-speed presentation, Will Wright demos his newest game, Spore, which promises to dazzle users even more than his previous masterpieces.
TED Talks
Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world
In this far-seeing talk, Seth Priebatsch shows how game dynamics are reshaping the world -- from a classroom where students "level up" instead of being graded ,to a pervasive game called "happy hour" that you may already be playing. Get...
TED Talks
John Hunter: Teaching with the World Peace Game
John Hunter puts all the problems of the world on a 4'x5' plywood board -- and lets his 4th-graders solve them. At TED2011, he explains how his World Peace Game engages schoolkids, and why the complex lessons it teaches -- spontaneous,...
TED Talks
Hillel Cooperman: LEGO for grownups
LEGO blocks: playtime mainstay for industrious kids, obsession for many (ahem!) mature adults. Hillel Cooperman takes us on a trip through the beloved bricks' colorful, sometimes oddball grownup subculture, featuring CAD, open-source...
Crash Course
Input Devices: Crash Course Games
Today we're going to talk about controllers. Controllers are incredibly important in the gaming experience because they are how we communicate actions within a game and often play a significant role in why we like or dislike certain...
TED Talks
Torsten Reil: Animate characters by evolving them
Torsten Reil talks about how the study of biology can help make natural-looking animated people -- by building a human from the inside out, with bones, muscles and a nervous system. He spoke at TED in 2003; see his work now in GTA4.
TED Talks
Tom Chatfield: 7 ways games reward the brain
We're bringing gameplay into more aspects of our lives, spending countless hours -- and real money -- exploring virtual worlds for imaginary treasures. Why? As Tom Chatfield shows, games are perfectly tuned to dole out rewards that...
TED Talks
Herman Narula: The transformative power of video games
A full third of the world's population -- 2.6 billion people -- play video games, plugging into massive networks of interaction that have opened up opportunities well beyond entertainment. In a talk about the future of the medium,...
TED Talks
Johnny Lee: Free or cheap Wii Remote hacks
Building sophisticated educational tools out of cheap parts, Johnny Lee demos his cool Wii Remote hacks, which turn the $40 video game controller into a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen and a head-mounted 3-D viewer.
TED Talks
Peter Molyneux: Meet Milo, the virtual boy
Peter Molyneux demos Milo, a hotly anticipated video game for Microsoft's Kinect controller. Perceptive and impressionable like a real 11-year-old, the virtual boy watches, listens and learns -- recognizing and responding to you.
TED Talks
David Perry: Are games better than life?
Game designer David Perry says tomorrow's videogames will be more than mere fun to the next generation of gamers. They'll be lush, complex, emotional experiences -- more involving and meaningful to some than real life. With an excerpt...
TED Talks
TED: The board game getting kids excited about school | Joel Baraka
Going to school in a refugee camp can be complicated: students encounter crowded classrooms, rigid curricula and limited access to teachers. Joel Baraka, who grew up in the Kyangwali refugee camp in Uganda, is determined to change that...
TED Talks
Philip Zimbardo: The demise of guys?
(NOTE: Statements in this talk have been challenged by scientists working in this field. Please read "Criticisms & Updates" below for more details.) Psychologist Philip Zimbardo asks, "Why are boys struggling?" He shares some stats...
TED Talks
TED: How online abuse of women has spiraled out of control | Ashley Judd
* Viewer discretion advised. This video includes discussion of mature topics and may be inappropriate for some audiences. Enough with online hate speech, sexual harassment and threats of violence against women and marginalized groups....
TED Talks
Brenda Romero: Gaming for understanding
It's never easy to get across the magnitude of complex tragedies -- so when Brenda Romero's daughter came home from school asking about slavery, she did what she does for a living -- she designed a game. She describes the surprising...
TED Talks
Cosmin Mihaiu: Physical therapy is boring -- play a game instead
You've just been injured, and you're on the way home from an hour of physical therapy. The last thing you want to do on your own is confusing exercises that take too long to show results. TED Fellow Cosmin Mihaiu demos a fun, cheap...
SciShow
Video Games Hack Your Brain (In a Fun Way)
Most of us can probably think of a time when we were enjoying a video game and then suddenly...it's 2 am. And that may not be entirely your fault! Video games are designed with elements that suck you in and put you in a state of flow,...
TED-Ed
TED-Ed: How to get better at video games, according to babies | Brian Christian
In 2013, a group of researchers wanted to create an AI system that could beat every Atari game. They developed a system called Deep Q Networks (DQN) and less than two years later, it was superhuman. But there was one notable exception....
Crash Course
Casual Gaming: Crash Course Games
Today, we're moving on from game consoles to talk about a bigger shift that was happening in the gaming industry. In the mid 2000s, we saw a proliferation of Internet accessible devices and with them gaming would expand to a new...
TED Talks
TED: 3 lessons on decision-making from a poker champion | Liv Boeree
Is it better to be lucky or good? Should we trust our gut feelings or rely on probabilities and careful analysis when making important decisions? In this quick talk, professional poker player Liv Boeree shares three strategies she's...
Crash Course
MMORPGs - Crash Course Games
So we ended the last episode with casual gaming and a more connected gaming community, but these connected communities started much before smartphones and Facebook. Today, we're going to talk about MMORPGs - or Massively Multiplayer...
Crash Course
The Dawn of Video Games: Crash Course Games
Over the next few episodes we're going to talk about the history of video games. Today, we're going to start with the first re-programmable computers in the 1940's. Now, these computers were serious tools. They were for codebreaking and...