Jason Della Rocca

Most Recent Affiliation(s):

• International Game Developers Association, _Director

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Bio:

• Jason Della Rocca is the executive director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), a professional society committed to advancing the careers and enhancing the lives of game developers. Jason and the IGDA focus on connecting developers with their peers, promoting professional development, and advocating on issues that affect the developer community – such as quality of life, creative freedoms, workforce diversity and credit standards. As the spokesperson for the IGDA, Jason has appeared in countless news outlets and has spoken at conferences around the world.

  In his opinion, computer and video games are an amazingly powerful medium for learning and self expression. Despite this power, the innate ability of games to teach goes unnoticed by most – often distracted by the sometimes questionable “surface details” (eg, non-stop action, mature themes, etc). In many ways, it is this covert learning that makes games so powerful, since the player is just having fun and doesn’t realize that learning is taking place. So, what happens when we “expose” the learning and make teaching a more overt part of the gaming experience – either as platforms for learning external skills or the intrinsic learning within the game itself? For the most part, the mainstream game industry is simply interested in making fun games that entertain and make money. Any educational value is more so a byproduct of those primary goals.