Games For Change - Service To The Community

Service To The Community

On the Play section of its website, Games for Change curates a “game arcade”: an ever-growing catalogue of serious and social impact games covering a wide rage of topics, many of which are available to play online for free. The site includes video documentation from past Festivals, the “101 Workshop” and “Power of Design: Youth Making Social Issue Games Workshop”, links to blogs, research papers, and grant opportunities. The organization also shares a selection of resources for those interested in researching, creating, or funding games for change. These resources include useful websites and blogs, videos, essays, toolkits, and grant opportunities.

The Games for Change web site also offers several ways that people can get engaged or start on the path to creating a game. The downloadable “Make a Game for Change Toolkit” offers everything one needs to know to take the first steps. Neither a technical or design manual, it is an overview of the game-making process that presents some of the key topics to start with, how to begin the conversation both within an organization and with outside partners, emphasizing that creating a social impact game is a collaborative process that likely will require an experienced game designer and developer.

To help create a larger community of enthusiasts, Games for Change created the Games for Change Meetup Everywhere site, which enables anyone around the world to self-organize under the organization’s banner and access community tools to create their own Meetup events. Games for Change has created a toolkit that provides tips, techniques, and even a handy timeline to help individual organizers in putting together a successful event. Since its debut in October 2010, 52 communities have formed using this platform – from San Francisco to Bangalore – with members ranging from 4 to over 100. Successful self-organized Meetups are covered by the Games for Change blog and social media, so they can serve as a model for other to initiate their own events.

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