Games For Change Festival Line-Up
We announced the Games For Change Festival line-up earlier this week with Vice President Al Gore, Pulitzer Prize winning author and business women Sheryl WuDunn and legendary game designer Jesse Schell as some of the leading speakers so far. I was brought on as festival program manager to help make this program happen. Games for Change is the leading global advocate for supporting and making games for social impact. The Games for Change Festival is the largest gaming event in New York City and the only international event uniting “games for change” creators, the public, civil society, academia, the gaming industry and media. This year’s festival will take place at NYU from June 20-22nd.
The most enjoyable part of this work for me is learning about the innovative collaborations, platforms and funding models that have emerged in recent years to make social impact games a reality. I’m building a program that will make these developments transparent to festival attendees interested in embarking on similar projects. This will be the 8th Annual Festival, and never before has there been such enthusiasm for games making a real world impact. The opportunities to produce social impact games are mushrooming. The 8th Annual Games For Change Festival will be the best opportunity to find out what has worked, what hasn’t and where all this is heading.
There has been a lot of great coverage of the festival line-up so far. One of my favorites comes from GamerTag Radio. Here’s what they have to say about Games For Change:
It’s a shame that often, when popular media covers the gaming industry, they can only point fingers and find fault with our beloved past-time. Can violent games be harmful? Sure…maybe. But are groups like Games for Change using the positive aspects of gaming to impact the world? Absolutely.
Check out the festival site for more information on the program and to register. The full press release on the line-up is available here.
