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ONE MAN'S ART IS ANOTHER MAN'S GAME

Video games are known for interactive play and, at times, educational purposes. Gamers may not think of them as art, but they are increasingly being considered an artistic medium. Associate Professor Rafael Fajardo, who teaches design in emergent digital practices, calls the creation of video games "a complex, multi-faceted, integrative and creative undertaking—a 21st century liberal art."

For twenty years, Fajardo has been investigating cultural identity and cultural representation through his work. While living and teaching along the U.S./Mexico border in 2000, Fajardo and a group of collaborators designed two video games that comment on the game-like nature of illegal human traffic at the border. This team effort resulted in the founding of SWEAT, a video game collaborative dedicated to making socially conscious video games.

"The games were created first and foremost as art," Fajardo said. "My impulse to create them was both a creative one and a response to a self-defined research question, so they are outcomes of creative research. I created them to both learn about video games and to respond to extant cultural conditions. They can be seen as my conversation, through material and visual means, with the very specific cultural conditions at the U.S./Mexico border."

Fajardo notes that his games can be instruments of dialogue and discourse. "Even though I demure from assigning my work a pedagogy, my visual work has a didactic as well as a poetic/artistic dimension. There is a point of view. There are stories to share," he said.
Fajardo has an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. His work has been recognized by the American Center for Design and by International Magazine of Design which named him one of the top 50 designers in the U.S. in 2004.

Since 2009, he has been the local organizer for the DU site of Global Game Jam, an annual international festival of game creation.

"Global Game Jam challenges people to come together to make games—analog and electronic—in a crazy-short 48-hour period, according to a common theme that is kept secret until the very beginning of the event. It celebrates creativity, collaboration, and experimentation," said Fajardo.

"It offers our students the opportunity to walk—sprint, really—through the entire process of game production, from conception to fruition, in a very short time frame," he added. "It allows seasoned professional, who we invite to participate alongside our students, to work outside the constraints of the marketplace, to stretch their creativity and to remember why they love making games. For both it offers a kind of audition space for potential new collaborations or for potential careers. Hard work, collegiality, creativity and skill are put on display."

"For the EDP and Game Development degree programs, our participation has allowed us to assert a leadership role regionally, and form part of an international cadre of sorts with a shared set of ideals about how games and games education might best be developed," said Fajardo, who has taught at DU since 2002.

"I love to teach design. I feel as though I am genuinely working on the future of the discipline in the classroom," Fajardo said. "When the light of understanding shines from a student's eyes, it is both gratifying and humbling to have contributed to that illumination."