15 Years of Games For Change

The organization Games for Change is hard to describe as being
just one thing: they throw a Festival that happens every year in
NYC, and that's been the backbone of the organization, but around
that has grown a really important community of artists and
activists, educators, computer scientists, developers, funders,
and game studios who believe deeply in the power of games for
improving the human experience. Sometimes that's about empathy
for other humans, sometimes it's about zooming in on something
remarkable, sometimes it's about simply tapping the playfulness
in all of us. When I think of Games for Change - some might call
them Serious Games - I think of titles like Dys4ia, a flashgame
by the legendary Anna Anthropy - quoting from Wikipedia, "to
recount her experiences of gender dysphoria and hormone
replacement therapy". There are hundreds of titles, and many
would argue that the boundaries between "serious games" and
others is really about your game design practice, more than
genre. They can be blurry, when you put them up against
Educational Games, or even virtual environments where the
outcomes aren't purely a play for revenue.


I've been really lucky to be a part of this organization's
evolution as a participant at the festival, as a partner to their
student game design challenge in my role at Mouse, and as a
member of the community that gains so much from the vision they
put forward 15 years ago. I feel like an Anniversary gift is in
order, and while I didn't send chocolates to founders - Ben
Stokes, Barry Joseph, Suzanne Seggerman - it felt like the next
best thing to spend some time with G4C President, Susanna
Pollack, and give you a chance to hear from two winners at this
year's festival.


3 Conversations, 15 years of Games for Change - enjoy.


Notes from this episode:


Games For Change: http://www.gamesforchange.org/


Attentat 1942: http://attentat1942.com/


Attentat 1942 Gameplay: https://youtu.be/kLct7kVW1sM


Charles University: https://cuni.cz/


About Assassins Creed, Origins for Education:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/arts/assassins-creed-origins-education.html


STEAM: https://store.steampowered.com/


Technology Student Association: http://www.tsaweb.org/


Play Garrett at Chameleon School:
http://tsabms.bsd.k12.pa.us/VideoGameDesign/Team903/


2018 G4C Student Challenge Winners:
http://www.gamesforchange.org/studentchallenge/awards-2018-student-challenge/


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