Enjoy our next lecture in the Transformative Play Initiative Event Series:
“Innovating for Growth: Designing a Culture of Safety in Games” by John Stavropoulos. In this lecture, Stavropoulos describes specific strategies that organizations can employ to increase feelings of safety and inclusion amongst members. He details how his teams have implemented some of these strategies in various role-playing game projects, including Dungeons & Dragons’ recent Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft (2021) published by Wizards of the Coast.
Moderated by: Sarah Lynne Bowman
Description:
Question: At Google, what differentiates their highest performing teams from everyone else?
Answer: Google conducted an in depth data and statistical analysis to find out what special secret supercharged their most innovative teams, and the number one answer was… psychological safety.
This lecture explores how we can leverage this truth in our game designs with the goal of creating transformative experiences. John Stavropoulos will provide concrete step by step best practices and use examples from his work in games (Dungeons & Dragons, Critical Role, Gen Con) to illustrate how you can do the same.
Learn:
– What is psychological safety?
– How can it help players process, integrate, and transform themselves through play?
– How can we decrease the perception of consequences and uncertainty when taking risks?
– How can we increase comfort taking risks and being vulnerable in front of each other?
– How can we design games to facilitate psychological safety?
Presenter bio:
John Stavropoulos is a proven design leader with 20+ years experience creating experiences for games, governments, sports, and museums. Notable clients include David Bowie, the Museum of Modern Art, the NY Yankees, and NASA.
Stavropoulos’ game design focuses on growing psychological safety and diversity, equity, and inclusion. His work appears in hundreds of products including Dungeons & Dragons, Critical Role, Nike, and the History Channel. He has also taught design at the Museum of Moving Image and NYU.
Stavropoulos’ designs have won awards from Gen Con, UX Magazine, and Code for America. At every company he has worked for, he has implemented systemic change to increase DEI hiring.