Are you interested in participating in the process of creation of the first purposefully designed r-evolutionary "Trojan Horse" Developmental Video Game?

As of August 2008, I have been involved in the process of writing my first video game script and also an upcoming book on the subject of developmental video games - assembling the various insights and ideas gathered during my academic research and ongoing explorations.

I am now looking for investors and partnerships with various people and organizations interested in making these video games a reality.

Attention UHPA! -  Untapped High Potentials Ahead!

Do you relate to one of the profiles below?

- Private Investors.

- Funding Institutions, Foundations & Agencies.

- Video Game Companies - Start-ups or mainstream.

- ­­Agent or Representative from the Video Game industry.

- Game Designers, Developers, Writers, Artists & Programmers.

- Academic Researchers and Experts in Video Games & Virtual Reality.

- Academic Researchers and Experts in Psychology, Psychotherapy & Coaching.
  Fields: Behavioral, Cognitive, Somatic, Developmental, Neuropsych., Social, Cultural, etc.

- Expert and Hardcore Gamers - or great video game fans!

If you resonate with the idea of creating developmental video games, or would like to know more about this project and join the cause, feel free to contact me

The video game industry has been focusing during the last 30 years a great deal of attention into the ages of childhood, adolescence and early adulthood, corresponding to the developmental range of pre-rational to rational stages of development (Wilber, 2007).

Moreover, an increasing part of the video game industry have been gradually going through a major cultural transformation in terms of questioning their current worldviews, paradigms, values and social responsibility, tapping into some post-modern altitudes of inquiry and practices (GDC San Francisco, 2008; GDC Austin 2008; Games+Learning+Society 2008; Meaningful Play 2008).

In my view, this is a timely and quite welcomed change, especially given the fact that the average age of gamer today is 33-35 years old, an age especially prone to benefit from integral research and applications related to inner growth beyond conventional adulthood levels (Cook-Greuter, 2006).
 
Besides that, 37 year-old gamers are now the biggest buyers of video games in the United States.

Also, according to the Entertainment Software Association’s 2007 Sales, Demographics and Usage Data: Essential Facts about the Computer and Video Game Industry, 28.2% of players in the US are under
18 years, 47.6% between 18 and 49, and 24.2% over the age of 50. In terms of parenting, “the average age of a gamer parent is 40 years old … and 93% of parents
who play computer and video games have children who also play them” (p.8).

In my research, I realized that the influence of video games in our culture and society is actually much bigger than many people might even imagine.

Indeed, “from all the entertainment media existent today (music, TV, movies, web, books, cartoons, theater), the video game industry is the fastest growing and one of the most popular, pervasive and profitable segments in the already “trillion-dollar-a-year” entertainment industry” (Bryant & Vorderer, 2006); having already surpassed the movies and music industries altogether (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2007).


From 1996 to 2007, computer and video games sales in the US grew from 2.6 billion into 7.5 billion dollars per year, as well as from 74.1 to 240.7 millions of units sold (Entertainment Software Association, 2007). In the year of 2007, “U.S. sales of video games, which includes portable and console hardware, software and accessories, generated revenues of almost $18 billion, a 43 percent increase over the $12.5 billion generated in 2006” (NPD group, 2007); reaching 37.5 billion in worldwide sales revenues (PwC, 2007). From 2005 to September 2008, there were at least $350MM of VC investements in social gaming, virtual worlds, casual MMOs, etc. (Andrew Chen's Futuristic Play Blog, 2008).

In the year of 2005 in the US: 

                        More than eight in ten (83%) young people [had] a video game console at
                        home, and a majority (56%) [had] two or more. About half (49%) [had] one in
                        their bedroom, and just over half (55%) [had] a handheld video game player.
                        (Rideout, Roberts & Foehr, 2005, p.36)           

Two years later in 2007, it was estimated that 33% of homes had a video game console in the US (ESA, 2007), with 38% of video game players being female, and 62% male (and 31% of women being age 18 year or older, in contrast with 20% of boys being age 17 or under).

It was also estimated that 67% of American heads of households were playing computer or video games (ESA, 2007). In terms of time, adult gamers had been playing computer or video games for an average of already 13 years (males, 14; females, 11) (!) (ESA, 2007), with an approximate number of “46% of all gamer parents [playing] for 10 years or more” … in average of 21 hours a month (!) (ESA, 2007).

These astounding numbers make video game play and “practice” in terms of time range and commitment to be quite significant and extremely prone for incorporation of a applications aimed to catalyze human development, since these practices also tend to request a lot of time, commitment and steady growth over time

Could video games designed to catalyze personal growth have a popular and profitable market demand? 

Well, just think by association...

If books related to self-help, personal improvement, wellness and spirituality have been successfully around for several years; if millions of people have benefited of using all kinds of media tools related to personal health and growth; if web 2.0 community portals are starting to bring developmental messages and applications into the mainstream; if movies and theatric plays have been already using meaningful messages for various psychological and therapeutic purposes for a long time; if spiritual traditions have been using all kind of artistic media to invoke awareness, growth and transformation for centuries in human history, then I ask: Why not video games?

At the moment, a series of current and emergent applications related to education, arts, health, behaviors, training, simulations, exercises, development, and social & cultural issues have been already explored by many video game designers and institutions, both in commercial, organizational, business, military, and academic areas. Investments in "serious games", advergaming, exergaming, and edutainment have skyrocketed in the past years. This new trend has been growing quite rapidly, in strong and steady ways.

On one hand, take (1) the impressive numbers of current male and female adult gamers described above; (2) the time they have been playing video games; (3) the average age of a gamer today (33-35 years-old); and (4) the average age of the "biggest gamer buyer" (37-years old).

On the other hand, add into these numbers the similarly impressive statistics from the Welness and Self-Improvement industries described in the paragraphs below.



Based on these statistics, questions about the potential popularity, profitability, and feasibility of using video games to catalyze human development seem to be pointing not to an "If" or "Why not?", but actually to a "When? or "At last when?"

According to Marketdata Enterprises, a group that tracks major cultural trends, the Self-improvement business is expected to hit $12 billion in the U.S. by 2008. 

According to Paul Zane Pilzer - world-renowned economist, entrepreneur and writer, the "Wellness Revolution" is gradually becoming the "Next Trillion Dollar Industry".

In 2002, his book The Wellness Revolution helped to define this industry and outline an emerging $200 billion growth for the next years. In 2008, wellness has grown to $500 billion and according to him, "it's still just getting started, offering even greater entrepreneurial opportunities".

The industries of Self-help, Personal Improvement, and Wellness are responsible today for a growing popular interest and multi-billionaire profits coming from diverse related activities.

Among them, a growing number of institutions, teachers and experts have been continuously sharing their messages through various kinds of media: Books, audio books, work books, CDs, DVDs, movie, TV, music, talk shows, websites, biofeedback interfaces, therapeutic and meditative technologies. In addition, an increasing number of people have participated in countless workshops, seminars, courses, classes, academic tracks, and looked after a myriad of preventive techniques and wellness products related to holistic health and integration of mind, body, heart and spirit. 

As the days go by, millions of people all around the world have been benefiting from using these various self-improvement and wellness media designed to promote inner awareness, holistic health, growth and transformation in many areas of their lives and the lives of their close ones.

As new form of media still in its infant days (pretty much as the movies were in the early 1900s), video games and virtual reality simulators can potentially incorporate all of these meaningful messages into their own structure and design, expanding their influence and power through the unprecedented potentials of interactive entertainment.

Adding the growing trends of the emergent Self-Improvement and Wellness industries into the rapid growth of the similarly emergent multi-billionaire Video Game industry, only "the sky is the limit" as to where the combination of both industries may be heading into the upcoming future... 

In the acceleration of technological progress, there is no industry in the world matching the video game industry today …. Video games and virtual reality simulators will be the main tools used for teaching,  training and learning in the next decades” (GDC, February 2008).

Ray Kurzweil*, inventor and futurist, author of the best sellers The Age of Spiritual Machines & The Singularity is Near.

* Ray Kurzweil was called “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes, the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison”, and one of 16 “revolutionaries who made America,” by PBS. His work and insights have been praised by US presidents (national Medal of Technology), and technology insiders such as Bill Gates (Microsoft) and Mike Brown, Nasdaq.

I do think that is going to happen, brain-mind linkages which in essence will plug every human mind into the World Wide Web and world wide computer capacities, [which] is going to be the [upcoming] techno-economic mode that underlies 2nd tier .... The idea of having video games that could be conducive to growth in all three [main groups of developmental lines] is certainly something that is feasible, the question is how much would it actually have an impact.

Ken Wilber*, philosopher, pundit, and writer, founder of the Integral Institute
(personal communications, 2008).

Moses Silbiger has been doing a breakthrough exploration on the untapped territory of designing integral-developmental video games as ‘Trojan horses’ for catalyzing human development through what I call the ‘Conveyor belt of Growth’. His research points into a significant and timely needed re-integration of the ‘worlds’ of entertainment (arts), technology (science), and integral development (morals) into new levels of inter-dependence through novel and proactive interactive-entertainment applications. I highly endorse Moses’s vision to bring meaningful messages and practices to the emergent world of interactive entertainment, a path which he has chosen to explore with such an engaging and contagious sense of purpose and passion! Looking forward to the unfolding and great manifestation of these potentially revolutionary integral-developmental video games, and to the virtual doors and windows they are most certainly going to open up, in, out, and down the ‘rabbit hole’ …  

Ken Wilber

* Having already written more than 20 books now published in more than 30 languages, Ken Wilber is today “the most translated academic author [in consciousness studies] and arguably the most systematic comprehensive contemporary philosophical thinker” (Marquis, 2008, p. xiii). Wilber also gave philosophical commentaries in The Matrix Triology movies, from the Ultimate Matrix Collection DVDs (Warner, 2004).

Learning is at its best when it is goal-oriented, contextual, interesting, challenging, and interactive. These same winning characteristics also define the best computer games … Learning can and should be hard fun!

Clark N. Quinn, PhD, E-learning & video game designer (2005).


We are already the most overinformed, underreflective people in the history of civilization. Is it possible the twenty-first century needs a new kind of learning and a new kind of leader to help us …? Perhaps [we can] begin building not simply an information highway but a transformation highway.

Robert Kegan, PhD developmental psychologist, professor, Harvard University (1998).


In addition to becoming instrumental tools for institutional goals, video games can also disrupt and change fundamental attitudes and beliefs about the world, leading to potentially significant long-term social change. I believe that this power is not equivalent to the content of video games ... Rather, this power lies in the very way video games mount claims through
procedural rhetorics. Thus, all kinds of video games, from mass-market commercial products to obscure art objects, possess the power to mount equally meaningful expression.

Ian Bogost, PhD, professor, author, and game designer (2007).


Play is not only an epiphenomenon but also an instigator of transformation .... As the player evolves, facets of the self which were once suppressed, unconscious or latent blossom into play, increasingly integrating the whole self and the whole world .... We also need to understand the potential for forms to create a shift from one developmental level to another more complex level. This requires an understanding of the complexity reflected and the play forms preferred at each stage of development.

Gwen Gordon, MA, educational designer, coach & researcher on transpersonal play (2007).
Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, PhD, professor, integral-scholar practicioner, and author (2007).


Through their creation of new and different worlds and characters, video games can challenge players’ taken-for-granted views about the world … they may come to realize at a conscious level certain values and perspectives they have heretofore taken for granted and now wish to reflect on the question .... It turns out that the theory of learning in good video games is close to what I believe are the best theories of learning in cognitive science. And this is not because game designers are reading academic texts on learning. Most of them don’t. They spent too much of their time in high school and beyond playing with computers and playing games.

James Paul Gee, PhD, professor and author (2007). 


We may be reassured.The vast industrial and social system by which we are enveloped does not threaten to crush us; neither does it seek to rob us of our soul. The energy emanating from it is free not only in the sense that it represents forces that can be used: it is moreover free because, in the whole no less than in the least of elements, it arises in a state that is ever more spiritualized.
 
Teillard de Chardin, scientist, mystic & visionary (1959).