AU SOC Associate Professor and Director of the Playful City Lab, Ben Stokes, took students and alumni from SOC's Game Design graduate programs to the inaugural Washington, DC MET Fest to game, network, and meet DC-area young people who are passionate about Esports and games, generally. He shares more about the experience below. 

On June 1st of 2024, I was proud to join with thousands of youth gamers at the Mystics home stadium in Washington, DC. It was the launch of MET Fest, a new event backed by the city. High school fans and families turned out for open game play, Esports tournaments, industry, college programs with scholarships and more. We were there on behalf of the AU Game Center, as one of the only programs pitching college and the liberal arts for gamers — and a broad set of careers and graduate programs beyond the mainstream industry.

Cities around the country are increasingly hosting events like this one. How should they grow?

My claim: we have to offer better trajectories to youth who love games — beyond cash prizes, and the equivalent of athletic scholarships. That’s why we pitched the idea of graduate programs in making games, not just playing them, also known as game design (e.g., our MA and MFA programs)… and even getting a PhD to become a “games doctor” (e.g., our PhD).

Yes, it’s early in the rise of eSports — but the signs are not good that we are building our cultural bridges wide enough. Gamer cultures are historically somewhat isolated from traditional civic and community organizations, as compared to film culture and even physical sports. Minority communities in particular deserve more openness from their youth organizations, and colleges have not lived up to their mission of teaching critical literacy around media since videogames are still seen as a special topic rather than a mainstay of a liberal arts education for all students (as compared to analyzing literary and film texts). One promising exception: youth media festivals, like the new Anacostia Youth Media Festival in DC, founded by our own Game Center faculty member Brigid Maher.

We hosted a table at MET Fest to be part of the solution. It was inspiring to see our diverse team of women telling youth about their experiences as game designers. For those of us at universities, we have to show how games can help to make college meaningful for a wider range of students, including with critical reflection and a large set of career trajectories.

Our youth deserve a vision for how their passion for games can be translated into careers and community life. I am inspired here by the famous 2000 book on “Bowling Alone” by sociologist Robert Putnam; we know that communities are stronger when play is social, and when the league structure brings diverse groups into contact. (For more on this argument, see my book Locally Played.) Are we designing our youth leagues in esports to cross zip codes, and open doors?

Most students will never have a chance to be a professional athlete and the same goes for being a professional eSports player. When city government sponsors a youth festival tied to sports, the prominent trajectories must include more than getting rich as an elite player and overly competitive scholarships for eSports players. All fans deserve a vision for their own play that is meaningful and long-term, beyond the narrow possibilities of being a professional player.

We jumped on stage to share our message, since the live Twitch stream can often reach much larger and more national audiences. Educator and game designer Che Rose teaches in the game design program at American University, but he also teaches in DC-area high schools. We had a great conversation about how to broaden the vision for careers tied to games, and to welcome gamers into broader liberal arts curricula.

One secret from our research in the Playful City Lab: as much as any one game is popular, even more youth care about changing the story of their neighborhood for a large audience. We saw this with Pokemon GO, and how a really wide range of youth were motivated to write the story of their neighborhood Pokestops, including local murals of activism and new monuments. Alongside welcoming youth with a gamer identity, we should also offer all youth a chance to write neighborhood game content and interactive stories tied to local history and monuments (e.g., see our project with the nation’s public libraries).

We look forward to next year’s MET Fest, and to the ongoing work to build positive trajectories for our gamers to future careers and community life.