BEAUTIFUL GAMES MAKE BEAUTIFUL BRAINS
While some digital games are extremely beautiful visually, some have beautiful missions. They offer fun ways to use our brains. They help us to understand the systems we must navigate in daily life. Even better, are games that teach our brains to work better as we have fun playing them. And the best are games that can move enough brains to change the world.
This week, the Games for Change Festival (G4C) took place in New York City, presenting the latest ideas and developments in the positive social impact of digital games.
Photo: Courtesy of Games for Change
One key area of impact: education.
The US ranks 25th in math and 17th science in amongst developed countries. Yet, over 50% of economic growth in the next decade will come from science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) related fields. This is a giant gap. As it now stands, the US can only fill about 30% of STEM related jobs. And, the US faces a serious crisis if it is not able to produce enough engineers in future.
The National STEM Video Game Challenge, an annual competition that aims to motivate interest in STEM learning among America’s youth, presented a demo of winning games and led a discussion about the opportunity gap.
Photo: Courtesy of STEM Challenge
One prime example of an opportunity to fill the gap lies within one of the largest and fastest growing populations, the socio-economically challenged Latino community.
Dr. Idit Harel Caperton, founder of the World Wide Workshop, a global non-profit, developing platforms that combine game mechanics and social networking for learning, was a key participant in the Festival’s Gamifying Schools and Schoolifying Games: The Art, The Science, and the Myth program. She raised important questions about mission. “Maybe it’s not about gamifying schools, but rather knowing how to gamify change?” she suggests.
One of Caperton’s most recent area of focus is the opportunity gaps faced by technologically underserved communities. She founded Globaloria, the first and largest social learning network that helps kids learn by learning to design and program their own educational games. By helping students develop digital literacies, and turning their brains on to STEM, Globaloria is helping to transform thousands of kids, who might otherwise have a bleak future, into productive and inspiring global citizens. Globaloria is an innovative blended learning platform that combines the benefits of MOOC’s with those gained from teacher-led instruction, team-based learning, and online networking with experts and peers.
Education opportunity gaps sometimes exist in places where you would least expect them, like in technology hubs. Two, in particular, are Austin, Texas and San Jose, in Silicon Valley, CA. Both have large Hispanic populations, whose socio-economic conditions leave them educationally bereft, thereby ensuring self-perpetuating poverty.
Photo: Courtesy of Globaloria
Globaloria addresses the digital opportunity divide. It has impacted challenged Latino communities in East Austin, in partnership with Dr. Juan Sanchez, CEO of Southwest Key, the largest Hispanic non-profit in Texas, and founder of one of the most ambitious and innovative charter schools, EAPrep. The Silicon Valley Education Foundation and local technology leaders partnered with Globaloria to impact large communities of kids in need in San Jose. The program’s game-based initiative is a great equalizer, as it makes concepts that can be hard to access easy, by softening and removing technology, language and experience barriers. It offers role models and mentors to kids who have none. And these games are yielding impressive success. They are helping to make kids ready for a creative productive future. “Platforms getting to point where 8 and 9-year olds are starting to code,“ says Caperton.
You can play some of the educational games designed and developed by Globaloria students here.
Image: Half the Sky
Beyond academic education, games can educate and impact the world in social issues. This past March, Half the Sky Movement: The Game, a new game on Facebook launched, inspired by the global movement for the equality of women, called "Half the Sky," founded by Sheryl WuDunn and her husband, Nicholas Kristof. Their PBS documentary series and book, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
"Half the Sky" garnered support from Zynga.org, the nonprofit arm of Zynga, which raised $15 million for about 50 causes, like Japanese earthquake relief, through its FarmVille game, as well as from Intel and the Ford Foundation.
Brenda Romero, industry veteran and game designer in residence at the University of California at Santa Cruz, discussed the emotional power games. Games can allow you to be a monster, a killer, a race car champion, among many personas. They can also allow you to be a world game-changer. Games can change the way we look at things. They can give us insights into other perspectives as we role play and interact outside of our normal real-life spheres. “We need to see the world as others might see it, and make games out of things we normally wouldn't make games out of," Romero said.
Photo: Courtesy of Games for Change
You can make a game out of anything. Check out some unlikely subject matter in this year’s G4C 2013 Award Winners:
Game of the Year: Quandary - Learning Games Network
More than just a city-building game, Quandry presents players with real-world ethical challenges they might have to face in at home or at school. The latest from the Learning Games Network, a spin-off of The Education Arcade at MIT and the Games+Learning+Society Program at the University of Wisconsin.
Most Innovative Game: Blindside - Epicycle
BlindSide is a fully-immersive 3D audio adventure set in a world you’ll never see. Inspired by one of the creators’ personal story of being temporarily blinded in a high school chemistry accident. A Kickstarter success story with 200 percent of its goal raised.
Best Gameplay: Reach for the Sun - Filament Games
Reach for the Sun is an educational science game, where players learn how to grow seedlings to fruition before the winter approaches. Behind all those leaves, roots, and petals is an intelligent bio-machine of starch, nutrients, and water. Help a young seedling grow and reproduce before winter approaches. From previous Games for Change Award winning-studio, Filament Games, and funded by the US Department of Education.
Video: Filament Games
Game with Most Significant Impact: Data Dealer - Cuteacute Media
Video: Data Dealer
“Legal? Illegal? Whatever.” is Data Dealer’s mantra. Share the mindset while you trade other people’s information on the Black Market. Bet you pay more attention to privacy-related issues after a few rounds of this and a check on today’s latest NSA scandal news. Funded by several Viennese and Austrian government agencies that support arts and culture. Data Dealer is urrently running a Kickstarter campaign to finish the multiplayer version.
Winner of the Game Design Competition: Safe Sex with Friends, designed by Kaho Abe, Ramsey Nasser and Sarah Schoemann
In Games for Change’s first‐ever public design competition, designers competed to create a prototype of a safe sex awareness game. The winning game will be developed in collaboration with Answer, a progressive, tech‐savvy organization that promotes sexual awareness among young people.
