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We Need Scientists to Create Video Games

Peter Ward: I’ve got a 12-year old son.  The only way to get to him is a video game.  That’s what he wants to do all the time.

If you look at PBS shows, and look at the audience of the PBS science shows, they all have the hair color I do – grey.  It’s an aging, graying audience.  We scientists have to stop writing the books we write or being on TV, and start writing video games. 


I’ve got a 12-year old son.  The only way to get to him is a video game.  That’s what he wants to do all the time.  Video games are the way to get into his and all his friends’ brains.  Make happy, really cool, first person shooters, but at the same time get across good science.  That’s the way to do it.  

I’ve really come to the conclusion that writing these books does virtually nothing.  You’ve got to get to people who don’t get it otherwise.  Video games to me seem like the logical way.  

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock


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