2019 Games for Change Festival

To achieve success in education gaming, developers must focus first and foremost on creating unique approaches to learning to inspire students and educators alike. In today’s landscape, that often means hyper-personalized, adaptive and measurable. With that comes a fear about data use from stakeholders who live near and far from the classroom, including parents, advocates and legislators, and that fear has been strong enough to derail even the most well-funded businesses. Learn what it takes to navigate this environment safely, building a foundation for success today, building trusting partnerships with schools and a pathway to growth in the future.

Building a great game for change is a challenge. Maximizing its impact is also a challenge! Come learn from teams about the work they've done to increase the reach, stickiness, and sustainability of their games. How can we more effectively distribute our games, maximize their audience, lengthen their lifespan, and make them more personal?

Moderator: Mark DeLoura

Clara Prieto
Designing for Inclusive Play: How to build games for everyone

Emma Cofer
Designing for Inclusive Play: How to build games for everyone

Shannon Frederick Meneses & Peter Stidwill
“Game of the Year”: Sharing Six Years of Learning

Linnette Attai
Personalization and Privacy: Innovating in the Age of Compliance

Brian Alspach
The Fundamental Equation of Games in the Classroom

In every corner of the globe, creative minds and product visionaries are making games and XR for players -- all focused around a vast range of health, wellness and medical practitioner ecosystems. These projects are tackling anxiety, malaria education, emotional self-assessment, and more. Join us to hear game designers, developers, program and product leaders talk about their work and their games in a lightning round of ten-minute project briefs.

Amir Bozorgzadeh
Brain Training in VR

Eduardo Ramírez
Identification of Design Patterns for Serious Games

Claudia-Santi Fernandes
Addressing School Climate Through a Game Experience

Amy Zimmerman

Zachary Whitten
Play For More Than Bragging Rights

Hundreds of eye clinics are using VR to treat lazy eye in more than 16 countries. This talk covers the science and business challenges of getting a novel VR medical device adopted as the new standard of care.

How many of you learnt about your brain when you were at school? With 50% of Mental Health Problems established by the age of 14, we believe that by learning about your brain and development this can help prevent the negative impacts of mental ill health and builds up skills, knowledge and the confidence to provide peer based support. Integrating neuroscience education, play, technology and psychological models of support, we created the Neuro Champions programme. This session will describe the Neuro Champions methodology, demonstrate game elements and share findings from our evaluation study.

In cities and neighborhoods, a new kind of game design is emerging. The digital and physical are coming together, from hybrid playgrounds to embedded screens at bus stops. Games were not the original goal. But as millions of youth learn to program Raspberry Pis ($50 each), and escape rooms can be created with DIY (Do-It-Yourself) kits, the movement is growing – and without headsets. In this provocation, you’ll hear how the future of mixed reality does NOT use consumer devices – but rather is embedded in public space and physical objects, strengthening neighborhoods from Mexico City to Los Angeles.

Companies are strip mining our cognition in their quest to hold our attention. But it’s not an infinite resource and those organizations don’t price the destruction of cognition into their cost of doing business. They have every incentive to continue the destruction. But we lose our ability to make rational decisions at work and as citizens, to take on the many complex extinction level challenges society now faces.

When the art and science of decision-making itself collapses might we face a Great Cognitive Depression?

We’ll explore playful ways to use games and AI to build cognition and cancel biases.

Learn how the desire to give autistic children a safe place to play Minecraft became the topic of dozens of research studies and news stories around the world.

Children with autism from all around the world are learning how to read and write, to make friends, teamwork, and even to be leaders, all within the game of Minecraft.

I'm going to show you how we accomplished all of this and more on my server, Autcraft.

How can the fastest growing media platform in the world be harnessed to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals and the urgent global needs they represent? Is your game company about to change the world – literally? With input from over 50 games industry leaders, the 2019 United Nations Environment report “Playing for the Planet” summarizes recent developments to yield seven key recommendations on how the video games industry can achieve tangible, real-world impact for the issues and people who need it most. Discover how you can empower your game, your company and your players, and add your voice to a groundbreaking UN event. https://playing4theplanet.org

Games can serve as a very powerful medium for learning, but equity and access continue to be challenges in the industry. Hear about several programs that have been developed specifically to provide opportunities for individuals in remote or otherwise under represented areas.

Amanda Armstrong
Using Formative Research to Inform Design of Serious Games

Maria Burns Ortiz
When Solving a “Small” Problem Can Have a Big Impact: How Developing Games for U.S. Tribal Communities Set Us Up for Global Expansion

Andrea Jetten
Games: Tackling the Learning Crisis for Children Affected by Conflict

Tammie Schrader
Flexhibit Carts and Game Based Learning in Science Classroom

Paul Darvasi
Grand Theft Auto Research

Lisa Castaneda & Bronwyn Stuckey
Picking the Low Hanging Fruit

Too often the conversation around games for learning focuses on their appeal and capacity for immersion. We need to take a deeper more evidence based look at the value games may (or may not) provide for learning. With the number of educators using games, we should know more about the extent to which virtual play experiences actually support learning outcomes. Even highly experienced, professional educators stay focused on student engagement. Join us for an interactive workshop where participants will reflect on, discuss and engage with research examples and contribute their own experiences to moving the conversation and assessment practices forward.

When Game Based Learning is implemented effectively, the game serves as the medium for learning. Students learn from the experiences provided through the game play. This quick take series will highlight the work of a number of outstanding educators who are using games as the primary vehicle for learning.  

Moderator: Peggy Sheehy

Vít Šisler
Stories of Nazi occupation in a classroom: Lessons learnt from Attentat 1942

Ben Spieldenner
Technical Reading & Writing Through Games

Jessica Ochoa Hendrix
A Discussion with Stakeholders of Piloting Games in Schools

Owen Gottlieb
Teaching Prosocial Religion from 12th Century Cairo: Lost & Found

In the last few years, games and VR for change have encouraged support, sympathy, and action for a variety of migration and refugee issues. In this talk, I analyze and compare the virtual reality installation Carne y Arena (Iñárritu 2017) and the digital game The Migrant Trail (Gigantic Mechanic 2014), as part of the multimedia project The Undocumented (Williams 2013). I will show how both digital media examples use semi-fictionalized ethnographies to allow their users to thoroughly experience a fragment of Mexican and Central American refugees’ and migrant’s personal journeys and life stories.

Ting Jiang will shed light on the science behind games and gamification and how to optimally apply serious games and gamification to promoting learnings and adopting the right behavior especially habitual behavior that impacts health and happiness with the "4P" framework. She will also demonstrate how the scientific tool of experimentation can be applied to both proving and improving products/games created.

Some events in medicine - cardiac arrest, mass casualties, pediatric resuscitations - are difficult for medical providers to train for. First, because of their rarity (Low-frequency), there is less experience. Second, because of their importance (High-stakes), it's not a great time to 'practice' or learn from 'trial-and-error.'

Virtual Reality is a new method to train healthcare providers for low-frequency, high-stakes events in a safe but stressful environment. We'll describe how Children's Hospital Los Angeles helped develop a VR solution that is now being implemented in multiple hospitals and medical centers throughout the world.