GAMES FOR CHANGE Expands Focus in Extended Reality, Education, Neurogaming, and Health with 15th ANNUAL FESTIVAL

Three Days of Programming To Feature Keynote Presentations by John Hanke (CEO, Niantic, Inc.), Kate Edwards (CEO & Principal Consultant, Geogrify), Sam Gill (Vice President /Communities & Impact; Senior Adviser to the President, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation), Ken Perlin (Director, Future Reality Lab, New York University), Rajesh Anandan (Senior Vice President; UNICEF Ventures, UNICEF USA), and more.

Tickets Currently on Sale via http://g4c18.eventbrite.com

Games for Change, the leading global advocate for the power of games as drivers of social good, announced the first slate of programming for its 15th Annual Games for Change Festival. Now in its 15th year, NYC’s premiere festival focused on the world of games is once again inviting leading educators, game developers, researchers, designers, social impact innovators, content creators, and more to come together to share their learnings, and look forward to the future of games for social impact. The Festival will take place from June 28–June 30, 2018, at Parsons School of Design at The New School in New York City.

Featured talks and panels include:

Cities Remixing Pokemon GO – Learn how a half-dozen cities positioned tens of thousands of players for local festivals, library campaigns, and youth empowerment.
MinecraftEDU – A panel of school leaders will share how Minecraft Education is empowering educators to engage their students in immersive STEM learning.
BBC Earth: Life in VR Panel – The panel will bring together BBC Earth: Life in VR’s core team to explore the editorial and strategic aims of the project alongside the creative and transformational intent of this landmark format. They will also discuss the opportunities VR developers have to reach mainstream audiences, and provide insight into how to best shape a product around their wants and needs. Including: Bradley Crooks – Head of Digital Ent & Games, BBC Worldwide, Phil Stuart – Creative Director, PRELOADED, Tom Burton – Exec Producer, BBC Studios, Kellee Santiago – Exec Producer VR & AR, Google.
Games and Empathy Panel – This panel will take a critical look at if and how empathy can be fostered in young people through the use of games. The discussion will include game developers, educators, guidance counselors and researchers and will offer a holistic, yet practical look at the use of games to spark, drive and teach empathy. Moderated by: Matthew Farber (Associate Professor, American University) and Karen Schrier (Associate Professor/Director of Games, Marist College)
Mozak: Turning the World Into a Neuroscience Lab – Mozak’s international online community of over 400 emerging experts has sped up neuron reconstruction by a factor of 3.6 over previous state-of-the-art procedures through a symbiosis of human insight and enhanced computational tools. This talk will describe how Mozak managed to do this in just one year, and how they plan to accelerate neuroscience 10 times over the next 3 years. ZoranPopović (Director, Center for Game Science at the University of Washington)
Game to Grow: How eSports Can Shape Student Success – The Orange County High School Esports League is leveraging student skills and passion for esports to frame an exciting new program for student learning. While gameplay and rivalries are the cornerstones of the League, experts see an opportunity to weave STEM, English Language Arts (ELA), and social emotional learning into one of the most popular pastimes for students today. The League combines a competitive tournament, mentorship, adaptive learning programs, and a blooming curriculum (planned for Fall 2018).

“In 15 years, Games for Change has brought together and galvanized nonprofits, foundations, government, and the game community across a broad spectrum of issue areas,” said Susanna Pollack, President of Games for Change. “We look forward to 15 more years of supporting this emerging community of change makers. The ways we work together, teach each other, and learn more about our world have changed and will continue to change. We look forward to staying at the forefront of that change and supporting the next generation of social good and social impact.”

To recognize the approaching 15th year of the Games For Changes Festival, Barry Joseph, Associate Director of Digital Learning at the American Museum of Natural History and G4C co-founder, will be leading a workshop to create a pop-up museum celebrating the history of the festival. Attendees will be invited to submit items from previous years of the festival. Barry will guide workshop participants in designing exhibits, writing copy, and creating narratives. After the workshop, the exhibit will be displayed at the festival for the entire community to experience.

The Games for Change Festival will follow three focused tracks, as it has done in years prior: Games for Learning, Neurogaming & Health, and Civics & Social Issues, to highlight the impact that games are having in these major sectors and beyond entertainment.

More background information, including speaker info can be found below:

TRACK 1: The Civics & Social Issues track aims to investigate key questions around the role of games during times of political turmoil. This track will delve into how games can help players understand their role as responsible citizens of a healthy democracy. A diverse group of designers, experts, and activists from independent and commercial game development will share how their work engages with a range of political topics.
Speakers Include: Anastasia Goodstein (SVP, Digital Innovation, The Ad Council), Judith Pintar (Dr., Director of E-Lit & Literacies Lab, Illinois Informatics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Prof. Joost Raessens (Full Professor and Chair of Media Theory, Utrecht University, The Netherlands), Sisi Wei (Deputy Editor, ProPublica) and Nicholas Fortugno (Co-Founder/CCO, Playmatics), Alan Gershenfeld (President/Co-Founder, E-Line Media), Florent Maurin (President, The Pixel Hunt), Angela Washko (Carnegie Mellon University), Elizabeth Lapenseé (Michigan State University) from Thunderbird Strike: Sovereign Game Development Without Borders.

TRACK 2: The Neurogaming & Health track aims to explore the links between behavioral psychology, the neuroscience of decision-making, and game mechanics. The program will dive into the myths and realities of brain-training games, and highlight some of the latest greatest health and neuroscience games with purpose. This track will examine not only novel research projects and successful games, but also how game creators and researchers can embrace and learn from failure.

Speakers include: Kristin Cook (Producer, Sesame Workshop), Kelli Dunlap (Mental Health and Games Manager, iThrive Games), Clay Ewing (Assistant Professor Department of Interactive Media, School of Communication, University of Miami), Chris McCarthy (Vice President, Strategy & Design, Hopelab), Kate Bertash (Director, Cyber Security Fund), Emily Treat (Director Experience Strategy, Mad*Pow), Dr. Hannah Kirk(TALI Health), Nick Bush (Project Lead, Moonray Studios), John Gardiner (COO, Highmark Interactive), Cosima Prahm (Research Assistant, Medical University of Vienna), Fares Kayali (Assistant Professor, Vienna University of Technology), Tracy Dennis-Tiwary (Founder, Personal Zen), Debra Lieberman (Director, Center for Digital Games Research, University of California, Santa Barbara), Allan Soutaris (SecondMuse), and more.

III. TRACK 3: This year’s Games for Learning Summit will review educational games from a local and global lens, provoking speakers and participants to consider how games can explore diverse contexts. Educators, investors, researchers, and designers will come together to share their learnings from the past and look forward to the next 15 years, as the games and learning community considers the power and pitfalls of games in educational spaces.

Speakers include: Adam Bellow (Co-Founder, Breakout EDU), Angel Rich (Founder and CEO, The Wealth Factory), Gonzalo Frasca (Chief Design Officer, Dragonbox), Harold Goldberg (President, Founder, Editor-in-Chief, New York Videogame Critics Circle), Alexander Winn (Edgeworks Entertainment, LLC), David Langendoen (Founder & Executive Director, Electric Funstuff), Leah Potter (Senior Instructional Designer, Electric Funstuff), , Lindsay Grace (Director, American University Game Lab), Robert Hone (Professor, American University), Aya Saket (Research and Program Development Officer at the Queen Rania Foundation for Education and Development), Natalie Gillard (FACTUALITY, LLC).

Programming for this year’s Festival will also feature the 2nd annual XR for Change Summit, formerly the VR for Change Summit, taking place on June 30. The Summit, which has expanded to include all forms of emerging media, will focus on advancing virtual technologies, bringing together developers, artists, storytellers, journalists, researchers, activists and policymakers for dialogue, connections and debates focused on new initiatives to advance the field. Additional speakers and programming specifically for the XR for Change Summit will be announced in the coming weeks.

To purchase tickets for the Games for Change Festival, please visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-2018-games-for-change-festival-tickets-42633992419.

Galit Gordon

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I'm a published author and proud US Army veteran who happens to be a gamer, so I decided to combine the two and love every minute of it! Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments and I'll be sure to get back to you.