@G4C:
I bet you didn't know that #G4C12 has almost 100 speakers this year, did you? http://t.co/uBObrjSc
A couple of weeks ago, as part of our Lab services, Games for Change led a full day hands on game workshop for Heifer International. Heifer, whose mission is to end world hunger through a livestock gifting program, education and hands on training, contacted us to help their new gaming efforts around this cause. The daylong program was co-sponsored by Heifer and the nearby Clinton School of Public Service.
After the first great day of Summits at the Game Developers Conference (March 5 – 9 in San Francisco) we wanted to give you an opportunity to follow along with our own day long event, the Games for Change @ GDC Summit. For those unable to attend on Tuesday, March 6, we’ll be live updating on social media all day.
Here are all the important links you need to follow:
Our Twitter account: @G4C
Our Facebook Fan Page
The Games for Change @ GDC Twitter hashtag: #G4CGDC
Full schedule blog post
We’re excited to meet some of the most prolific and interesting individuals and companies in the gaming industry. Follow us online and we hope to share a full day’s worth of compelling content during the Games for Change @ GDC Summit.
See you in San Francisco!
2nd Annual Games for Change Award WinnersDo you have what it takes to be Game of the Year?
The submission process has just opened for the 3rd Annual Games for Change Awards. Of note for this year… new categories!
2012 Award Categories include:
Most Significant Impact
Most Innovative Game
Best Gameplay
Knight News Game
and… Game of the Year
The deadline to submit for the Games for Change Awards is
Friday, March 23 at 11:59 PM EST.
Criteria and application here.
Last week, we had the pleasure of welcoming Emily Treat as the latest addition to the Games for Change New York City staff. She joins us as our new Senior Game Producer. To give everyone a sense of her background, her experiences, and what she hopes to bring to the table, we thought it would be a great idea to let her speak for herself…
By Julie Coniglio
Crowdfunding is a great option for games for good – especially for causes that already have communities attached to them. With supporters and end-users funding your game project, you don’t have a publisher or investor vetting your ideas. Essentially, online crowdfunding platforms are vehicles to create change from the bottom up. While they can be powerful tools, they are uncharted territory for many people. This post outlines the importance of a strategic approach to three main aspects of a crowdfunding campaign: community, incentives, and your personal impression.
Kickstarter is the most powerful crowdfunding platform. A few months ago, the makers of the D-Day Dice Board Game raised over $170k to manufacture and distribute their award-winning game. The goal was just $13k. Our favorite “Secret Headquarters for Worldchanging Game Developers”, Gameful, was also funded on Kickstarter and raised $62k more than they set out to. Veteran game designer Tim Schafer reached his funding goal of $400k in eight hours and reached over $1 million in less than a day!
Every campaign doesn’t need lots of dollar signs – the platform offers flexibility for creators looking to launch small initiatives for an under-addressed or niche cause. There are other platform options such as 8-bit Funding, Rocket Hub, IndieGoGo, and, newest to the scene, Lucky Ant. Whichever platform you choose, these are some key insights to keep in mind.
By Josh Spiro
Two groups of people take a standardized test. One group gets asked to fill out their race before the exam, the other doesn’t. This simple question produces a phenomenon called “Stereotype Threat”, which makes people, particularly people of color, subconsciously anxious that they might prove a stereotype true, and drastically reduces their performance.
This is the type of thing that Michael Baran thinks about in his work as a cultural anthropologist and diversity consultant; it’s also the type of information he’s compelled players to think about through his app-based quiz game, Guess My Race (a 2011 Games for Change Award nominee). Created in collaboration with Michael Handelman, Baran’s close friend from college and head of the interactive design agency Playtime Interactive, Guess My Race shows players photos of different people and asks them to guess how each person racially self-identifies. It is a deceptively challenging question that Baran says “messes with people’s competitive urges.” The player then gets to see the person’s answer as well as a tidbit of information (like the one above about stereotype threat) in order to put the personal stories in a larger context.
Since the app launched in May 2010, it has been exhibited in a number of museums, including the Boston Museum of Science and the San Diego Museum of Man, where Baran says it has reached hundreds of thousands of people. He’s comfortable calling the app a “game for change”, though he acknowledges that some people think of it as more of a learning tool than a game “since you can’t really get better at it.” He wanted to create a game that addressed questions of race and identity in a fun way as a counterbalance to the heavy-handed and patronizing approaches he felt were often brought to the topic.
In our interview below, Baran discusses the pain and exhilaration of watching people play test one’s work, how the media dodges deep analysis of race in favor of discussing Obama’s favorite beer, and how making the player frustrated can ultimately be educational.
There’s one month to go before we bring our inaugural daylong summit to the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, on March 6.
Early bird pricing ends on February 2nd – so take advantage of GDC’s discounted pricing by registering now.
For those of you who haven’t registered, allows us to stoke your curiosity by showing you what you can expect at the Games for Change @ GDC Summit…
AGENDA
How Designing for Love Can Change the World – 10:00am
In a series of dynamic micro-lectures moderated by Jane McGonigal, six game designers will discuss how games can generate profound emotional impact.
Battlestorm: Games as a Powerful Tool for Community Engagement – 11:15AM
Zynga New York and The Knight Foundation will team up to share a postmortem of Battlestorm, a project that combines multiple gaming approaches to empower youth around hurricane preparedness in a Gulf Coast community.
WeTopia: Game Companies & Nonprofits Creating New Business Models – 11:50AM
Lincoln Brown, CEO of Sojo Studios, will outline the unique “hybrid business model” behind his studio’s premier Facebook game “WeTopia”.
AAA Game Mechanics Inspiring Learning and Assessment Mechanics – 1:45PM
Jan Plass of NYU’s Games for Learning Institute will analyze how popular game mechanics from successful commercial games can inspire the gameplay and evaluation of games that aim to foster learning.
“Elephant Safari: Milan 2011″ and “Activate! Abu Dhabi” will be featured
in our Microtalks for Change panel.
Winning Behavior-Change Game Design & Engagement – 2:20PM
Following last year’s highly popular panel, this updated version will provide new case studies, research, and practical design takeaways from compelling projects with the purpose of affecting sustainable personal development.
From Milan to Abu Dhabi: Microtalks for Change – 3:00PM
This jam-packed microtalks session will look at innovative games for change from all over the world: Abu Dhabi, Milan, the United Kingdom, to all across America.
More Than Fun: Designing Games With Purpose – 4:30PM
Phil Stuart of the Award-Winning studio Preloaded in the UK will break down some of the game design techniques his studio employs to create games for change that receive millions of plays.
Keynote: Ian Livingstone, From Dungeons to Downing Street – How games are growing up for good! – 5:05PM
The founder of Eidos (Tomb Raider) is giving back – from raising the profile of the industry at 10 Downing Street, to GamesAid, a unique charity formed by the UK gaming industry.
SPEAKERS
Ian Livingstone, the Life President of Eidos, will speak about how he’s helping
the UK gaming industry give back.
We will be featuring the work and thoughts of over 20 speakers during our daylong summit. Representing the game development community will be…
Scott Brodie (Heart Shaped Games), Jane McGonigal (Social Chocolate), Martin Hollis (Zoonami), Chelsea Howe (Social Chocolate), Mitu Khandaker (The Tiniest Shark Ltd.), Michael Molinari (Namco Bandai), Scott Hoffer (Zynga New York), Lincoln Brown (Sojo Studios), Michael Kim (Kairos Labs), Colleen Macklin (Parsons / Local No. 12), David Mariner (FunRigger), Mathias Crawford (Natron Baxter Applied Gaming), Rob Davis (Playniac), Nick Fortugno (Playmatics), Phil Stuart (Preloaded)
In addition, our summit will feature dedicated members from academia, games research, and foundations, including…
Jane Pincknard (UC Santa Cruz), Jan L. Plass (NYU Games for Learning Institute), Nicole Lazzaro (XEODesign), John Murphy (ChicagoQuest Schools), Jessica Goldfin (Knight Foundation), Mayur Patel (Knight Foundation)
REGISTER NOW
Early bird pricing ends on February 2nd and registration closes on February 29th.
In 2006, the Singapore government began working with The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in a partnership to research digital media. One of their core projects was the Singapore-MIT Game Lab, whose goal was to research how the latest game technology, culture, art, history, and business could contribute to Singapore’s gaming industry. For the past 5 years, this lab has been producing game prototypes that have pushed the boundaries of game design by testing new ideas, topics, and approaches.
Much of the Game Lab’s work revolves around their summer program. For 9 weeks, 40 – 50 Singapore students come to MIT to work directly with students and faculty. The amount of students and faculty working on projects creates a fast paced environment that allows for the rapid creation of short, yet fairly complex games.
One of their most recent projects is A Closed World, a game prototpye that aims to explore LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer) issues. As part of their research, the students wanted to challenge the lack of queer content in games, while navigating the challenge of “getting it right”, or in other words, creating content that feels organic and appropriate. To learn more about the challenges in creating A Closed World, I conducted an in depth interview with Todd Harper, a postdoctoral researcher at the Singapore-MIT Game Lab.
The 9th Annual Games for Change Festival will be taking place on June 18-20, 2012. The call for talks and presentations is now live! The Festival is the largest gaming event in New York City and the only event that facilitates the creation and distribution of social impact games that serve as critical tools in humanitarian and educational efforts.
To submit a talk or presentation, click here.
Submission deadline: Friday, February 17 at 11:59 pm EST.
Accepted speakers will receive a complimentary pass to the Festival and will be notified on March 16.
In early October 2011, the Game Developer Conference Online (GDC Online) debuted a game called Passing the Ball to tackle the topic of online safety for children. Recently we spoke to Gregory Weir, the lead game designer on the project to learn how his design aesthetics helped create the experience of the game.
But to learn more about why GDC Online chose to release a “game for change”, I spoke to their parent company’s Simon Carless, the Executive Vice President of UBM TechWeb Game Network via email. In our interview we spoke about the importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR), games as art, and the public’s reaction to Passing the Ball.
