Games for Change
Dubbed an early “Sundance of Video Gamesâ€, G4C is an exciting new activist movement and supporting non-profit dedicated to using games for positive social change.
Games are “growing upâ€. Like documentary film before them, they are now transitioning from an entertainment-only medium into a vehicle able to engage serious and social-issue content.
Game technologies provide an extraordinary opportunity for learning, civic engagement and social change around some of the most pressing issues of our day: poverty, climate change, racial inequities, global conflicts. Games allow players an environment to explore complex issues and their interrelated variables in a way that one-way media such as film and television cannot. “Situated learning†where players learn by interacting with the content has been shown to foster a deeper relationship to the material and a “safe†place to practice new behaviors.
Games for Change (G4C) aims to bring about concrete positive social change in the real world through supporting the emerging field of digital games. These new games not only involve the user in dedicated and sustained engagement in the issues facing them, but they aim to move the users to take their new knowledge one step further: taking action in the real world. Through the letter-writing campaign within the game Darfur is Dying, hundreds of activists sent letters to their government representatives; A Force More Powerful, created by the Center on Non-Violent Conflict created out of extensive research into oppressive regimes around the world, trains its users to resist tyranny through non-violent means in places like Myanmar, Iran and North Korea. Peacemaker was an Israeli-Palestinian collaboration, and a finalist in the Ashoka Peace Prize - it has been played by both young people and government officials in both those countries. These games are just the starting point.
Vote for us and you’ll be empowering a new generation of activists to use these powerful technologies for good!
Dubbed an early “Sundance of Video Gamesâ€, the G4C Festival, founded in 2004, is the primary showcase for these new kinds of games fostering positive social change. This year’s festival on June 11-12 in NYC (see: http://www.gamesforchange.org/conference/2007/index.php>) features: Susan Tenby/TechSoup; Alison Fine/Demos; Bob Kerrey/the New School; Adam Green/MoveOn.org, many others.
While other game conferences cost upwards of $800, the G4C Festival maintains an accessible entry point for NGOs, academics and activists. With a sliding scale for these groups, we engage the changemakers and a future generation of activists at a cost they can afford. We also offer full scholarships to individuals who show the greatest need and who can make the greatest impact. A higher entry fee is paid by the wide variety of commercial groups – game developers, software companies, business owners. There is also a tremendous opportunity for sponsorship funding, including from major game industry entities, interested in gaining a toehold in this new field.
Like the Sundance Institute, as we grow we have begun to build out other programming – a game hub showcasing the latest games; game workshops for non-profits and academics,; online tutorials for executives and other students; funders briefings as an orientation into this new world.
Other game conferences have been forced to partner with commercial entities, changing the content and focus of the conference – away from education and social issues and towards business development. The prices become inaccessible to non-profits and activists, those using the technology to make a positive difference in the world. This creates both a cycle of commercial dependence and a lock-out to activists. Without the funding needed to support the sliding scale, G4C may be forced to raise prices, shutting out many deserving conference attendees. That means you – the changemakers - who could most benefit from our festival.
With a NetSquared Community grant, we could keep our festival entry fees accessible by providing the much-needed sliding scale. We could use some of that funding to find staff to multiply the grant through sponsorships and increased non-profit attendance. Sponsorship funding could expand our programming, allowing for social-issue game workshops around the country, expanding the potential for the non-profit community to get involved in this extraordinary technology, poised for tremendous contribution to all of our work. We could also eventually build out our much-needed game hub to showcase the games and case studies coming out of our community.
Tech Support
We need experienced programmers and designer to help us build a game hub/database to showcase the many games for change emerging from the new field. We also need help in creating long-term online festival sponsorship and donation platforms.
Current:
- G4C Festival planning is fully underway (see here: http://www.gamesforchange.org/conference/2007)
April:
- Major festival outreach to non-profit community
- Offer discount codes for non-profit communities such as NetSquared, N-Ten, others
- Hire sponsorship dynamo to reach out to major industry sponsors
- Begin to secure sponsorships
May
- Finalize sponsorship contracts, build out concrete festival participation
June
- Festival!
July
- Build programmatic strategy for regional game workshops for non-profits
- Begin the game hub build
Games for Change, founded in 2004, is the central organization building the field of positive social change through digital games media. We act as the new movement’s international nexus for visibility, community and best practices; like documentary film before us, we are building a new field: using game technology to address social issues. We’ve been covered this year in the New York Times, NPR, Newsweek and CNN, (see press highlights here: http://www.gamesforchange.org/conference/2007/press.php) and in many other national and international media outlets, and have a community of close to 700 members from around the globe. We have regional groups growing from Australia to Boston, Seoul to San Francisco, and one in Second Life.
We received initial funding for our social change work from MacArthur, Surdna and RWJ Foundations, at no more than $15K each. And while we are largely grass-roots, we have also begun production and distribution partnerships with high-profile organizations such as MTV, the UN, Microsoft and MoveOn.org in order to maximize our impact in the international, policy and commercial sectors, and to reach as wide an audience as possible.
We are poised for tremendous growth.
But we need funding. Two of us worked for a year full-time (overtime really!) for nothing, and in the fall 2006 received our first grants. But they are not enough to sustain us.
Please support this new movement dedicated to empowering all you dedicated activists with a powerful technology. Please vote for changing the world for the better – one game at a time!
