2013 was my second visit to the Games 4 Change (G4C) conference in New York City. Last year I was so inspired by my trip that I decided to submit a proposal to present at this conference and was very very excited when it was accepted. The G4C festival represents the Games for Change movement (see prior blog post on Games Movements) and is THE place for truly meaningful games. This year’s conference was again inspiring. I met amazing people working on amazing projects and was honored to be included in the speaker population. The new venue provided some much needed room for a quickly growing conference, and was hands down the coolest place I’ve ever presented.
The highlight of this year for me was AMPLIFY project. This project is dedicated towards Literacy and STEM learning outside of the classroom. That’s right, casual games for learning. I love it. Not only were the games shown here clever and well put together, they were visually gorgeous. The project brings together national and international game studios to build a variety of games. My favorite games within this project include:
- Lexica – a fantastical game designed to get students interested in literature by Schell Games (I don’t agree with their hiring process, but they did a great job on this game).
- Storycards – a card game of authors and characters by Preloaded.
- SimCell – a game by Strange Loop that explores the cells of muscles
I met some really great people including people from the Latin America Games for Change initiative and many game developers who really care about the world! You can check out some of the presentations (including mine I think…eeek….) on YouTube! The Games 4 Change awards also showcased some really great efforts! Check them out here http://www.gamesforchange.org/festival2013/games/