Kate Edwards
Geogrify / SetJetters
Kate Edwards is an award-winning 29+ year veteran of the game industry, and the CEO and principal consultant of Geogrify, a consultancy which innovated content culturalization, as well as the CXO and Co-Founder of SetJetters, a film tourism app. She is also the former Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and the Global Game Jam. In addition to serving in several board and advisory roles, she is a geographer, writer, and corporate strategist. In 2021, she was included in the Forbes' "50 Over 50" Vision List and was also inducted into the Women in Games Hall of Fame.
Kate Edwards is speaking at the following session/s
Cultural Interoperability: The Biggest Challenge to the Metaverse (and Beyond)
As gaming spaces are the foundation for what is envisioned to be the forthcoming "metaverse", most of the current discourse is about technical interoperability; i.e., how we enable diverse platforms to seamlessly work together. However, this focus almost completely overlooks the most challenging aspect of cultural interoperability; i.e., how people from diverse worldviews and geographies will achieve equal access and common ground. This is especially problematic when our current world shows clear centrifugal cultural and geopolitical forces that are the antithesis of what the metaverse promises. With over 30 years of experience in games as a geographer and culturalization strategist, Kate Edwards has been involved in the creation of over 250 games. She will demonstrate the complexities of managing cultural interoperability as we strive to build globally inclusive virtual spaces in the midst of very real-world constraints.
Session Takeaway
- Attendees will understand the complexities of trying to accommodate multiple worldviews in a single, shared space
- Greater understanding of the role of culturalization in preparing content for a global, multicultural audience
- An appreciation of how realizing a true metaverse will be far more challenging than just the technology
Session speakers
