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With so many things in the world 
to learn and master,

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how can anyone ever become an icon,
a genius or a maverick?

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I think most of us here probably relate

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more to the Demon Cat in Adventure Time

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where we have, like, an approximate
knowledge of many things.

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Luckily, knowledge in one topic can
actually help you master another topic

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or at least, help you get a head start.

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So my name is Liz Fiacco

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and I graduated here,
Chapman University

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last year with a BFA in Visual Arts
and game development.

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After graduation, I founded a company 
called Fallstreak Studio

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with the partners that I work with on 
developing a game called Axel.

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So we raised 20,000 dollars through 
donations on Kickstarter

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but we could not have done that

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without a lot of hard work 
and a huge transition.

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You see, I've been studying 
animation and film for 4 years,

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as emphasizing in storyboarding,

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and then suddenly I found myself 


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surrounded by all these 
businessmen and businesswomen.

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And I was a little bit out of my water.

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Luckily, I think everyone here
has experienced some time

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where you've learnt something
outside of the classroom

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and it's become useful
somewhere unexpected.

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For instance, when you're a kid
and you're roasting marshmallows

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you kind of get the idea that you can 
get the fire going by blowing on it

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and you get the idea 
that you put a fire out

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by smothering it with water or sand.

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Well, that's great 
for roasting marshmallows,

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but then when you get 
to high school chemistry

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and you're studying combustion reactions,

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all of a sudden you understand
why oxygen is needed for fires.

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You have this innate knowledge of it.

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But you weren't thinking about chemistry
back when you were roasting marshmallows.

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Unless of course you had really nerdy 
parents who told you.

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So I used this ability,

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these transferable skills,
after I graduated

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to sort of retrofit 
my film animation education

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into the entrepreneur world.

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One of the first things that
just kind of boggled my mind

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about the business world is that 
everyone kept asking me:

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"who's your market"?

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And my major reaction was to say:
"anyone, please,

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someone, please, someone, 
buy my product! Please!"

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But that is not what they wanted to hear.

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So, when we were developing 
our Kickstarter video,

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I realized that when businesspeople 
asked me what our market was,

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that's when film people were asking us
who you're audience is?

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And that painted a really
clear picture for me.

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And from there I can make 
better choices about how to build,

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market and monetize our game.

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So, transferable skills,
incredibly useful

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but kind of unpredictable.

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You don't really know
when a skill you learn in one place

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is going to come in handy 
somewhere else.

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Plus, everyone comes from different
backgrounds and experiences,

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so they're hard to share.

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If you tell someone about 
a transferable skill,

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they don't really experience
the transferable skill.

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But it's such a powerful learning tool

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there's got to be a way to make it 
part of a day-to-day solution.

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And that is where I think 
videogames can really shine.

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See, games are actually the perfect medium
to hone transferable skills

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because most of the times when you think 
of a skill that you learn in a videogame,

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you're thinking kind of like,
knowing what ability that you need to be

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super effective to gain some 
certain pokemon

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which isn't terribly useful day-to-day.

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But, if you think about 
something like Rock Band,

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if you learn how to drum on Rock Band,

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eventually you're gonna learn 
how to do real syncopated rhythms

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and you're gonna learn 
some common drum techniques,

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which is pretty sweet.

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And the power of these games comes from
their rapid teaching test cycles.

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A player learns something new and then
immediately has to put it into practice

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and they get tested on it again 
and again and again.

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One of the greatest games, Portal, 
is actually about 70% tutorial.

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So is not that when they teach you
it's a dry,

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clearly, teaching through a videogame
is incredibly compelling.

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Additionally, through a game
you can learn from failure.

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I probably lost... I probably died 
maybe hundreds of times

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trying to beat 
Donkey Kong Country Returns.

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If I failed hundreds of tests in school,
I would have a very bad time.

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But luckily with videogames,
you can learn from failure.

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Additionally, with technology today,
videogames can actually simulate

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extremely complex systems.
And they're interactive

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which means that students or players
can change stuff about these systems

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and then see the repercusions 
of their actions in the world.

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So all these powers in videogames,

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but you can't get 
a transferable skill from it

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unless the mechanics actually reflect
real skills and real content.

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Like with Risk. I love playing Risk
and I'm very competitive at Risk.

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So in order to be good at Risk,
I need to really understand the map,

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know where all the countries are,
know what borders what,

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and this knowledge 
to be competitive at Risk

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helped me out when I was studying 
World Geography.

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Or a more poignant example 
is the game Foldit.

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Foldit is a game about 
folding proteins up.

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Stuff that scientists 
are actually working on.

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But it's a puzzle game and 
it's a lot of fun,

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and people actually managed
to fold the protein

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within a couple weeks 
of the game's launch,

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that scientists have been stumped on
for years.

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That's pretty cool.
That's a lot of power.

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Also, games allow you to discover stuff
for yourself through the mechanics

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you can find strategies and techniques

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and really understand 
why that's important.

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For instance with Risk again,
I feel like I have first hand experience

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on why Napoleon had such a hard time
moving his armies east through Russia.

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Like that's impossible.

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So yes, transferable skills are
incredibly important

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but historically they've been only used
out of accident or necessity

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or disresourcefulness.

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And if we are mindful of them,

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we can actually make them
a lot more powerful.

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We can start inserting them into
the games that we make or other media.

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So, encourage teachers to take
a second look at games

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as more than just a distraction.

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And try to find those real world ideas
and concepts and content from them

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in order to actually bring 
that content into the classroom.

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Because these games aren't
necessarily educational,

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like Risk, you don't think of it as 
an educational game.

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And Foldit is really more 
of a puzzle game.

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But yet there's really valuable 
experience in them.

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So, by actively seeking connections


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you can actually use 
transferable skills to a benefit.

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Because if we all have a bunch 
of disjointed experiences,

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then you end up like that Demon Cat
from Adventure Time:

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you have an approximate knowledge
of many different things.

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But using transferable skills,
that can be the difference between

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being knowledgeable 
and being a genius.

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So I urge everyone to go out

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and try to create experiences
that can be transferable

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for yourself and also for others.

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And to realize that we have 
the opportunity now to make

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widespread transferable experiences 
through videogames

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and therefore the opportunity 
to make an entire generation

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of icons, geniuses and mavericks.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)