Games for Change

The latest issue of New York Nonprofit Press (NYNP) featured an interesting article on social issue video games. As more nonprofits look toward the Internet to increase the visibility of their issues, interactive learning models in the form of games are becoming more popular. Games for Change is an organization that helps nonprofits and foundations create digital games that promote social change. Their games include Ayiti: The Cost of Life, in which players win by improving life for their Haitian families, and the simple but addicting Free Rice where players can test their vocabulary and send 20 real grains of rice through the UN World Food Program.

Many of the games have been created using thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours (including input from high school students), but as the NYNP article reported, you don't need unlimited resources to harness the benefits of gaming. Coleen Macklin, the director of the Games for Change design and research lab pointed out that, "You can take games out there that are commercially available and begin to look at them through a different lens... Ask different questions about Grand Theft Auto. Give kids the opportunity to talk about the issues these games bring up, because they do bring up issues. Or, think about using existing games in a different way like using SimCity in a way that might emphasize issues around segregation. You don't need a big budget for this... It is just thinking about games and play in a new way."

Check out some of the Games for Change next time you're procrastinating! You can browse by topic: politics, global conflict, environment, poverty, and domestic issues.