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RICHARD EBERHARDT: My
name's Rick Eberhardt.

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I'm the studio manager
for the MIT Game Lab.

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I've been with the
lab since 2007, 2006,

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so since we formed a
long, long time ago.

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Before I worked at the
lab, most of my background

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has been doing
information technology

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for academics, institutes,
so colleges and universities.

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I always had an
interest in games.

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I actually had a cultural
studies degree in college

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for my undergrad.

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So coming to the lab, working
at the lab for that first year

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as a system administrator
really opened

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my eyes to all the different
things games can do

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and the different potentials
games have, but also made me

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realize I can actually start
making these kinds of things

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on my own too.

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So since I've started
working at the lab,

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I've taken on more
duties related

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to project management,
things I'd already

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done a lot in IT-- managing
people managing projects.

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I teach this Creating
Video Games course,

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and for the most
part in the course,

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I'm interested in teaching the
product management techniques,

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but also the soft skills
and the social skills.

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I'm an introvert.

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I have a really hard time having
conversations with people.

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And I've had to, in my
years in my profession,

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figure out ways to not
let that be a restriction,

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and actually use
that to my advantage

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when I'm talking with teams.

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And I find it really successful,
actually, in game development.

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I don't know if it could
be successful elsewhere,

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but there's a lot of other
like-minded people like me

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in game development.

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So it's good to
have, for me, to be

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able to use those
skills in that setting.

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The other advantage I
have at the Game Lab

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is I get to do research.

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I get to help with research
on various different types

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of projects.

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So my personal
research interests

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tend to be towards
closer to what

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this class is talking about--
this meaningful decision

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making.

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I've done some research
in using board games

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to teach decision making,
in particular, like economic

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concepts, like opportunity cost.

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I'm interested in social
experiences in games,

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and cooperative gameplay.

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Past games I've worked on
have been about all sorts

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of different things.

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So anything from tools to
help game developers make

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3D characters animate
faster-- basically

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to speed up the
workflow process--

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to games about
depression and games

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about other serious topics.

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I really like working
with researchers.

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I like working with clients,
and I like making games.

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What am I playing now?

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So I am playing this
game called Gridland,

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made by the same developer who
made a previous game called

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A Dark Room.

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It's kind of
difficult to describe.

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It's basically a
match-three game

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where you're like Bejeweled,
you're matching gems.

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But there is a small
supply chain mechanic

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going on in the background.

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Where as I have
the gems combined,

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I can upgrade my weapons,
and I can upgrade my armor.

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And then when night comes--
so I'm matching gems

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in the daytime to upgrade
things-- and when night comes,

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I'm matching gems to summon
enemies and to kill enemies.

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So this Gridland game has a
daytime and a nighttime view

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of the game.

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And what I find really
interesting about it

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is that all my decisions
I make in the day

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are going to have
some kind of influence

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in my nighttime decisions.

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So as I make my daytime
experience easier,

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I'm actually making my
nighttime experience harder.

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So it's just a really
interesting little challenge

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that the designers put
for me to try to solve.

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So outside of the class, the
kinds of games I'm making

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are non-digital
prototypes, so card games,

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in particular, that
are experimenting

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with things like a tech
tree and a 4X-style game.

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So if you've played a
game like Civilization,

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or StarCraft even, they'll have
these tech expansion trees.

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So I'm playing around with
designing a game that's

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largely just the tech tree.

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I'm doing that with a
coworker here, Drew.

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I've also got a game
I've been working on,

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off and on for the
past couple years,

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about managing cities--
about three players trying

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to manage a city.

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They're counsel people.

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I'm trying to convince the mayor
about what decisions the mayor

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should make for the city, but,
unfortunately, the mayor is

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just the role of
a six-sided die.

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So you can try to
convince him or her

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what you want, but
it really doesn't

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matter because the mayor's
got its own agenda.

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So then you're trying to solve
the problems with the city,

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while also trying to solve
your own personal-- trying

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to basically get political
gain while solving the city's

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problems.

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There's a lot of different
co-op experiences out there--

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from anything from over the
table like cooperative board

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games to couch style
co-op in front of the TV.

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I'm trying to think my favorite
co-op experience is definitely

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not Pandemic,
which I think we're

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talking about in class today.

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I have a hard time deciding what
my favorite co-op experience is

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because so often, one of the
challenges of co-op games

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is somebody takes
control, and somebody

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says what the whole everybody
on the team is going to do.

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And unfortunately, I'm
one of those people.

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If I know the game, I'll start
being bossy and I'll take over.

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And what I'd love to
see more co-op games

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do is put in mechanics to
prevent me from being a jerk.

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Or enable other people to
override my jerkiness somehow.

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So the thing I look forward to
most in this class every year

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is the playtest
sessions, especially when

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it's the first time the team has
brought the game into the class

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and they're putting it in front
of new users, which we only

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have a couple opportunities
for each project for that

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to happen in class.

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After that everyone
in the classroom

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has seen the game
before, so they

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are not giving the
same kind of feedback.

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And what I really like about
it is when the games come in

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and they just don't work.

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They're broken horribly.

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Not when it's the
technical problems--

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not when it's the code crashing
or it's the broken build.

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That's actually really sad,
and I hate to see that.

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But when it's a
design issue, when

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they thought it was going
to do this one thing

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and see the game doing
this other thing,

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or they see the players
doing this other thing,

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it's at that point that the
students understand that OK,

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people do people things.

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Humans are human, right?

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You can't always
predict everything

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that they're going to do.

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But also that the
systems that they created

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are actually incredibly complex.

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So the things that they need
to do to fix the systems

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are going to be reducing
mechanics, removing things

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from the game, making it
a little bit more simple,

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so that they can predict
a little bit better

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about what's going on.

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But then on the
flip side of that,

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though, there's
sometimes when you

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see something
happen in the game,

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and you just get this
emergent gameplay

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that is better than what
they were going for.

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They didn't realize
they wanted it.

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When they see it
in action, they're

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like, oh, this is
actually really great.

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What can we do when
we're finishing this game

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to really capitalize on
this mechanic or this system

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that we just didn't
even realize was there?

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I really like systems.

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Outside of the
class, I think this

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might be the thing
that I actually,

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I always had in some capacity.

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But really coming to
MIT, working at MIT,

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it's much more
part of my life is

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seeing the systems that surround
us and the systems of history.

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I've always had an
interest in history,

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and a little bit of
interest in anthropology.

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But reading Charles Mann's
books about 1491 and 1493,

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what happened during
the Colombian Exchange,

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when all of these
different ideas

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and products and
agricultural things

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swapped places
from East to West,

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from China to the
Americas to Europe.

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There's just some really
interesting systems.

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And a lot of the problems
we're facing today

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are the direct result
of that big expansion

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of ideas and trading of ideas.

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So I've always been interested
in those kind of things.

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And I'm watching The Wire.

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I really like The Wire.

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And just seeing the systems that
are involved in city planning,

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in police work, in education,
in all these civic institutions

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that we just take for
granted every day.

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Yes, The Wire is a very
critical and a very pessimistic

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view of it.

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But it is a great expression of
just how all of these problems

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are connected.

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And some of the problems
that we are facing right now,

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it's just we can't
see the connections.

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And I hope that, at least with
games, with playing games,

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with making games, people
can better understand

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how those systems work.

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For the future of games, games
as expressions of systems,

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games as ways of exploring
the world around us.

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We've always--
1,000 of years ago,

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we used games as ways to
communicate with each other,

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to have rituals with each
other to better connect

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with each other.

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And I think we can do that
with just games in general--

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not just video
games, but all sorts

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of different kinds of games.

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So seeing that come
back to both what people

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are talking about when they
talk about games in mainstream.

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Other than just this
thing that's done for fun,

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it's actually this
thing that's very

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important to human daily life.

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And we've been
doing it for years.

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It's just it looks
different now,

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but it's still based on
a lot of the same things.