NYU Game Center director Frank Lantz sees a deep schism in the contemporary world between rationality and emotion, reason and intuition, logic and feeling. Games can actually offer us deep insight into this conflict, and at GDC 2014 Lantz spoke at length about how developers can study and create games that explore the gap. In a wide-ranging talk, Lantz explored how games are made, played and talked about in an effort to better understand the different ways in which people look at the world. If we study them closely, says Lantz, games can reveal the subtle and complex connections between science and art, between objective facts and profound truths, between the fearsome power of conscious, deliberate thought, and the mysterious values that guide and limit that power. It's a mind-bending talk that's worth watching, and the free video (embedded above) of 'Hearts and Minds' is now available to watch here on the GDC Vault.

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