 |
|
Games for Change has identified and selected the following games as being examples of games that engage contemporary social issues in meaningful ways to foster a more just, equitable and/or tolerant society. These games have been created by cross-disciplinary teams from around the world and all aim to serve the public interest.
Channels
Filters
Age Range
|
Other Filters Award Winners Staff Picks Youth Produced |
Complete Game List
3rd World Farmer (0 comments)
Target Audience 11 and up
Description
3rd World Farmer lets players manage a small virtual farm in a developing country, and thus experience the hardships and dilemmas faced by the poor.
Developer
3rd World Farmer Team
Social Issue Channels
Economics
Poverty
Global Conflict
Politics
A Force More Powerful (0 comments)
Target Audience 14 and up
Description
AFMP is the first and only game to teach the waging of conflict using nonviolent methods. Destined for use by activists, the game will also educate the media and general public on the potential of nonviolent action and serve as a simulation tool for academic studies of nonviolent resistance
Developer
International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, York Zimmerman Inc. and BreakAway Games
Social Issue Channels
Public Policy
Against All Odds (0 comments)
Target Audience 14 and up
Description
Against All Odds is about the global refugee experience from the time people are forced to leave their countries of origin to the beginning of their new life abroad.
Developer
UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency
Social Issue Channels
Human Rights
Global Conflict
Akrasia (0 comments)
Target Audience 14 and up
Description
Akrasia is a single-player game that challenges game conventions and is intended to make the player think and reflect. It is based on the abstract concept of addiction, which is expressed metaphorically throughout the game.
Developer
Doris Rusch
Social Issue Channels
Public Health
At-Risk (0 comments)
Target Audience 18 and up
Description
At-Risk is an interactive, game-based simulation that aims to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness in order to reduce the number of students with undetected or untreated conditions. Addressing the fear and stigma of mental illness is one key to preparing university faculty and staff to assist students exhibiting symptoms of mental illness, such as depression, anxiety, and thoughts of suicide.
Developer
Kognito Interactive
Social Issue Channels
Public Health
Ayiti: The Cost of Life (0 comments)
Target Audience 11 and up
Description
Ayiti: The Cost of Life is a game that challenges its players to manage a rural family of five in Haiti over four years and keep them healthy, get them educated, and help them survive. Develop in a unique partnership between youth in an after school program and a professional game developer, the game has been played over a half million times since its launch six months ago and has proven to be a hit as both an engaging game and as a tool for education.
Developer
Global Kids and GameLab
Social Issue Channels
Human Rights
Poverty
Balance of the Planet (0 comments)
Target Audience 11 and up
Description
Balance of the Planet simulates nothing less than Earth's ecosystem. Although Maxis' Sim Earth is often credited as the first "ecosim", the title rightfully belongs to Crawford's game. Both games are equally interesting nevertheless, as they use two vastly different approaches to an enormously complex subject.
Developer
Chris Crawford
Social Issue Channels
Environment
Branches of Power (0 comments)
Target Audience 11 and up
Description
Play all three branches of the U.S. government and experience the powers and limitations of each in trying to get things done!
Developer
Filament Games
Social Issue Channels
Public Policy
Politics
Budget Hero (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
Budget Hero seeks to provide a values- and fiscal-based lens for citizens to examine policy debates during this election year.
Social Issue Channels
Caduceus (0 comments)
Target Audience 7 and up
Description
The Caduceus “Game for Good-Make it Better” — g4gMIB — challenge is the nation’s first online game-a-thon for kids aged 8-12. Kids are invited to apply their passions for games and their “powers for good” to help raise money to fuel the discovery of cures and treatments for serious childhood diseases at Children's Hospital Boston.
Developer
FableVision and MIT Education Arcade
Social Issue Channels
Other
Climate Challenge (0 comments)
Target Audience 18 and up
Description
Climate Challenge is a single-player game about climate change, playable for free on the BBC website. It is a sandbox-style strategy game based on real climate change data, where the player can try out different approaches, learn about the issues and have fun at the same time.
Developer
Red Redemption Ltd.
Social Issue Channels
Environment
Politics
Connect2Climate (0 comments)
Target Audience
Developer
ZMQ Software Systems
Social Issue Channels
Darfur is Dying (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
Darfur is Dying is a web-based, viral video game that provides a window into the experience of the 2.5 million refugees in the Darfur region of Sudan. It is designed to raise awareness of the genocide taking place in Darfur and empower college students to help stop the crisis.
Developer
interFUEL, LLC
Social Issue Channels
ElectroCity (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
ElectroCity is a new online computer game that lets players manage their own virtual towns and cities. It’s great fun to play and also teaches players all about energy, sustainability and environmental management in New Zealand.
Developer
Genesis Energy
Social Issue Channels
EnerCities (0 comments)
Target Audience 14 and up
Description
EnerCities is the first serious game on Facebook. It's about energy sources and the balance between people, planet and profit. Can you create a metropolis that stands the test of time?
Developer
Paladin Studios
Social Issue Channels
Economics
Public Policy
Public Health
Environment
Politics
Energyville (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
Energyville represents the average industrialized city and its consumption of energy. Players must create energy sources in the present in order to create a sustainable future city in 2030.
Developer
The Economist Group
Social Issue Channels
Escape from Woomera (0 comments)
Target Audience 7 and up
Description
If you thought escaping from Castle Wolfenstein was hard, try Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Centre... With a first person, 3D adventure game we invite gamers to assume the character of, and 'live' through the experiences of a modern day refugee. The effective media lock-out from immigration detention centres has meant that the whole truth about what goes on behind the razor-wire at Woomera, Baxter, Port Hedland, Maribyrnong and Villawood remains largely a mystery to the Australian public. We want to challenge this by offering the world a glimpse - more than that even: an interactive, immersive experience - of life within the most secretive and controversial places on the Australian political and geographical landscape. In this way, Escape From Woomera will be an engine for mobilising experiences and situations otherwise inaccessible to an nation of disempowered onlookers. It will provide both a portal and a toolkit for reworking and engaging with what is otherwise an entirely mediated current affair.
Developer
Katharine Neil (aka 'Kipper'), Creative Director, Matthew Jones (aka 'Matt Harrigan'), Programmer
Social Issue Channels
Human Rights
Fat World (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
FATWORLD is a video game about the politics of nutrition. It explores the relationships between obesity, nutrition, and socioeconomics in the contemporary U.S.
Developer
Persuasive Games
Social Issue Channels
Fate of the World (0 comments)
Target Audience 11 and up
Description
Save the world or burn it down - it’s your choice! Fate of the World is a unique dramatic global strategy game that puts all our futures in your hands.
Developer
Red Redemption Ltd
Social Issue Channels
Economics
Public Policy
Public Health
Environment
Global Conflict
News
Politics
Food Force (1 comment)
Target Audience 7 and up
Description
Food Force is an educational action computer game that teaches kids about the problem of global hunger and the importance of humanitarian aid work.
Developer
Deepend Srl for the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)
Social Issue Channels
Poverty
Free Rice (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
Free rice is a free online vocabulary gain that donates 20 grains of rice to the World Food Programme (WFP) for every correct answer. WFP ditributes the rice to hugry people all over the world.
Developer
John Breen
Social Issue Channels
Global Conflicts: Latin America (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
Global Conflicts: Latin America is a 3D-roleplaying game that let players explore key problems in Latin American countries. The region is one of the most turbulent, violent, and poverty-striken places in the world, yet we rarely hear anything about the nations that struggle with paramilitary rule, extreme poverty, and exploitation of the population.
Developer
Serious Games Interactive
Social Issue Channels
Human Rights
Poverty
Environment
Global Conflict
Politics
Global Conflicts: Palestine (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
Global Conflicts: Palestine is a 3D role-playing game for players to explore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They will be confronted with issues around human rights, terrorism and the media’s role in conflict zones and will experience situations taken from real life events that are more complicated than outsiders may realise.
Developer
Serious Games Interactive
Social Issue Channels
Human Rights
Global Conflict
Politics
Harpooned (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
Harpooned is a free game for Windows. It is a Cetacean Research Simulator, where you play the role of a Japanese scientist performing research on whales around Antarctica.
Developer
Conor O'Kane
Social Issue Channels
Hidden Agenda (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
In Hidden Agenda, you are the new president of Chimerica (a fictive country in Central America). You have been chosen after the citizens overthrew the evil dictator Farsante. The game can be considered good educational material.
Social Issue Channels
http://www.freedomhivaids.in (0 comments)
Target Audience 11 and up
Developer
ZMQ
Social Issue Channels
Public Health
Hurricane Katrina: Tempest in Crescent City (0 comments)
Target Audience 11 and up
Description
Global Kids Youth Leaders selected the topic of Hurricane Katrina and worked with game developers Gamepill to create Hurricane Katrina: Tempest in Crescent City. The web-based game recognizes local heroes that emerged during the disaster while educating its players about the essentials of disaster readiness and of reporters.
Developer
Global Kids and Gamepill
Social Issue Channels
Human Rights
Economics
Poverty
Environment
News
Politics
Hush (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
Hush is a game created by University of Southern California Interactive Media Division MFA students Jamie Antonisse and Devon Johnson in their fall 2007 Intermediate Game Design and Development course.
Developer
Jaimie Antonisse
Social Issue Channels
Hustlin' Health Care (0 comments)
Target Audience 18 and up
Description
Undercut the competition! Lobby congress! Deny claims! Steal patients! You are an insurance company and it's up to you to stay in business while taking care of your patients. Are you up to the challenge?
Developer
Clay Ewing
Social Issue Channels
Economics
Public Health
Politics
Other
ICED - I Can End Deportation (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
Breakthrough's video game, ICED – I Can End Deportation, (www.icedgame.com) puts you in the shoes of an immigrant to illustrate how unfair immigration laws deny due process and violate human rights. These laws affect all immigrants: legal residents, those fleeing persecution, students and undocumented people.
Developer
Breakthrough
Social Issue Channels
iCivics (0 comments)
Target Audience 11 and up
Description
Spearheaded by Justice Sandra Day O' Connor, iCivics is a web-based education project designed to reinvigorate civic teaching and learning. iCivics features free lesson plans, web quests, discussion forums, and games. With these tools, iCivics will help empower the first generation of 'digital natives' to become knowledgeable civic participants and leaders.
Developer
Filament Games, Jim Gee
Social Issue Channels
Public Policy
News
Politics
Karma Tycoon (0 comments)
Target Audience 11 and up
Description
Karma Tycoon is an online strategy game in which players solve community problems, such as homelessness, in cities across the US. Players learn the ins and outs of the not-for-profit world as they apply for grants, receive donations and have to manage their budget efficiently. It is available free of charge at KarmaTycoon.com
Developer
9mmedia (and Do Something)
Social Issue Channels
Economics
Poverty
love letters to the future (0 comments)
Target Audience 14 and up
Description
Love Letters to the Future is cross platform experience designed to raise awareness about the rapidly expanding danger of global warming. It was funded by Greenpeace International and a group of NGO's as an online innovative game, buried artfully in a website that contained user generated letters about the future of our planet. It launched prior to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen December 2009. The link attached is a video walkthrough of the project. It was recently nominated in best activism category of SXSW web awards,recently won two webby wards
Developer
sara thacher from nonchalance
Social Issue Channels
Environment
Martian Boneyards (0 comments)
Target Audience 14 and up
Description
Martian Boneyards is a game of scientific collaboration and problem-solving in the new, spectacular, high definition massively-multiplayer online environment (MMO) called Blue Mars. EdGE@TERC and VSE have teamed together to bring expertise in innovative science education and state-of-the-art MMO gaming technologies to create an unprecedented opportunity for scientific knowledge building.
Developer
EdGE@TERC and VSE
Social Issue Channels
Environment
Other
MILLEE: Mobile and Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
Cellphone-based games that enable poor children in the developing world to acquire language and literacy in immersive, game-like environments. These games target localized language learning needs and aim to make literacy resources more accessible to underprivileged children who face the child labor challenge.
Developer
Matthew Kam and team
Social Issue Channels
Nation States (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
NationStates is a free nation simulation game. Build a nation and run it according to your own warped political ideals. Create a Utopian paradise for society's less fortunate or a totalitarian corporate police state. Care for your people or deliberately oppress them. Join the World Assembly or remain a rogue state. It's up to you. NationStates was created by Max Barry and based loosely on his novel Jennifer Government.
Developer
Max Barry
Social Issue Channels
Oiligarchy (0 comments)
Target Audience 11 and up
Description
Now you can be the protagonist of the petroleum era: explore and drill around the world, corrupt politicians, stop alternative energies and increase the oil addiction. Be sure to have fun before the resources begin to deplete.
Developer
Molleindustria
Social Issue Channels
Human Rights
Economics
Environment
Politics
Orange Revolution (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
A simulation guiding players through the events of the Orange Revolution of 2004 in Ukraine, through the eyes of the two main presidential candidates. Players must come secure democratic reform without violence.
Developer
TakingITGlobal
Social Issue Channels
Participatory Chinatown (0 comments)
Target Audience 14 and up
Description
Participatory Chinatown seeks to pair gaming with the traditional town-hall meeting. Donning virtual avatars, residents explore Chinatown in someone else's shoes to complete virtual quests that highlight planning issues and encourage collaboration and discussion. The game combines virtual interaction, physical deliberation, and Web-based input to foster extended community participation.
Developer
Muzzy Lane
Social Issue Channels
Public Policy
Environment
Politics
Other
Pathfinder (0 comments)
Target Audience 11 and up
Description
Pathfinder's goal is simple: create a game to arouse high school students' interest in higher education; one that will enable and encourage them to successfully make the journey to and through college.
Developer
University of Southern California Game Innovation Lab
Social Issue Channels
Other
PeaceMaker (0 comments)
Target Audience 14 and up
Description
PeaceMaker is inspired by real events in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It challenges players to succeed as a leader where others have failed: bringing peace to the Middle-East. Playing both perspectives, players could experience the joy of winning the Nobel Prize or the agony of plunging the region into disaster.
Developer
ImpactGames
Social Issue Channels
Global Conflict
News
Politics
Pictures for Truth (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
Pictures for truth is a full 3d adventure game where you play a journalist in China. You will take picture and publish article to help about human right related trouble.
Developer
Florent Guinier, Karim Osman, Patrick Boutot, Vincent Theriault
Social Issue Channels
Play the News (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
"Play the News" is an engaging, community-driven experience - imagine fantasy sports meets the evening news. The platform’s goal is to drive “Interactive News” mini games that change news consumption from passive reading to active engagement. The platform is flexible enough to address a range of global and local content.
Developer
ImpactGames LLC
Social Issue Channels
Pos or Not (0 comments)
Target Audience 14 and up
Description
Pos or Not is a viral online game that confronts the stigma still surrounding HIV/AIDS more than 25 years after the first case of the disease was reported.
Developer
VPI
Social Issue Channels
Public Health
Precipice (0 comments)
Target Audience 11 and up
Description
A narratively driven 3D game about climate change.
Developer
Centre for Digital Media
Social Issue Channels
Environment
Raid Gaza (0 comments)
Target Audience 14 and up
Description
A short game that demonstrates the power imbalance between Israel and Gaza.
Developer
Raitendo
Social Issue Channels
Global Conflict
News
Re-Mission (0 comments)
Target Audience 14 and up
Description
Re-Mission is a video game that gives young people with cancer a sense of power and control over their disease. It's a fun, effective tool that improves treatment adherence, cancer knowledge and self-efficacy.
Developer
Realtime Associates, Inc.
Social Issue Channels
Other
Reach the World’s GeoGames (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
Can you build the globe in less than three minutes? Give your world geography skills a test with Reach the World’s GeoGames, an online, interactive suite of geography-learning games based on research at Teachers College, Columbia University and funded originally by the National Geographic Society Education Foundation.
Developer
Reach the World and Dangerous Media, with underwriting support from the National Geographic Society Education Foundation
Social Issue Channels
Economics
Poverty
Other
Real Lives 2010 (0 comments)
Target Audience 11 and up
Description
Real Lives 2010 is the latest version of the Real Lives simulation that enables you to live a life in any country of the world, all based on real world statistics.
Developer
Educational Simulations
Social Issue Channels
Human Rights
Economics
Public Policy
Poverty
Global Conflict
Politics
RePlay: Finding Zoe (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
The RePlay video game is geared towards promoting healthy, equal relationships between youth aged 8 to 14 years old. It challenges mainstream gender stereotypes that children learn from a young age, and that often lead to the social proliferation of violence against women and girls.
Developer
METRAC in partnership with Susana Ruiz, Huy Trong, Ashley York
Social Issue Channels
Runesinger (0 comments)
Target Audience 7 and up
Description
Play with Korean. Feed a village. Practice a few nouns and verbs by serving food to villagers during a famine in North Korea. Each villager sings the food they need. Compose the letters into a magic word. Play in virtual environment and user interface that embody Hangul.
Developer
Ethan Kennerly et al.
Social Issue Channels
Poverty
Other
Seeds (0 comments)
Target Audience 14 and up
Description
Seeds is a thought-provoking, interactive experience that positions players at the center of bio-ethical debate. Part serialized medical drama, part online social game, Seeds prompts and often challenges players to assess their own beliefs to determine an ethical, moral and compassionate solution. Through engaging role-play in which players treat and diagnose infertility using cutting-edge and controversial technologies, players learn how each decision shapes their world and the fate of the characters in it.
Developer
Nahil Sharkasi
Social Issue Channels
Public Health
Other
September 12th - A Toy World (0 comments)
Target Audience 11 and up
Description
Highly controversial at its launch in 2003, September 12th’s describes the post 9-11 world. Created by a team of Uruguayan game developers lead by a former CNN journalist, this game virally exposed the futility of the US-led War on Terror.
Developer
Newsgaming.com
Social Issue Channels
Global Conflict
News
Politics
SimEP (Solid Waste Management Computer Game) (1 comment)
Target Audience Description
SimEP is an online RPG game with six characters in a family setting which aims to inspire every citizen to lead a greener lifestyle. Through this game, the public will be able to appreciate the growing waste problem, how they can play a role in addressing the problem through waste reduction, re-use and recovery.
Developer
Hong Kong Productivity Council
Social Issue Channels
Stop Disasters (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
Disaster prevention awareness on a grand scale. This game for the UN ISDR tackles the very real issue around the World of saving lives and reducing the financial impact that natural hazards cause when they turn into disasters.
Developer
Playerthree
Social Issue Channels
The Arcade Wire: Airport Security (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
Airport Security offers a satirical critique of airport security practices circa early fall 2006, when security agencies in the US and abroad changed their policies to prohibit common items like toothpaste and hair gel.
Developer
Persuasive Games
Social Issue Channels
The Arcade Wire: Oil God (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
You are an Oil God! Wreak havoc on the world's oil supplies by unleashing war and disaster. Bend governments and economies to your will to alter trade practices. Your goal? Double consumer gasoline prices in five years using whatever means necessary.
Developer
Persuasive Games
Social Issue Channels
The Budget Maze (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
Players in Gotham Gazette's web-based Budget Maze navigate a dreary dungeon. At various rooms, the player must find the zombie who holds the answers to a question about the city or state budget process in order to move forward.
Developer
Gotham Gazette with Forum One
Social Issue Channels
The Great Green Game (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
This game tests your knowledge of how consumer choices affect the environment.
Developer
The Union of Concerned Scientists
Social Issue Channels
The Redistricting Game (1 comment)
Target Audience Description
The Redistricting Game educates, engages, and empowers citizens around the issue of congressional redistricting. As is illustrated in the game, our system is subject to a range of manipulations and helps fuel long-term political polarization in the U.S. Those empowered to change the system – congress - have the least incentive to do so.
Developer
USC Game Innovation Lab
Social Issue Channels
The Vinyl Game (0 comments)
small.gif)
Target Audience Description
Can you manage an industry sustainably? The Vinyl Game requires you to deliver shareholder profits whilst taking socio-economic and environmental decisions. The consequences of playing purely for economic growth become apparent as EU legislators levy fines, consumers boycott products and the trade unions vote to take strike action!
Developer
Zelian
Social Issue Channels
Traces of Hope (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
Vicious war in Northern Uganda has destroyed Joseph’s home and torn his family apart. He has one goal, to find out from the Red Cross if his mother is alive or dead.
Developer
British Red Cross
Social Issue Channels
UN Global Compact Dilemma Game (0 comments)
Target Audience 18 and up
Description
The United Nations Global Compact Dilemma Game is a board game that allows players to try to solve a series of challenging real life business dilemmas. The dilemmas cover human rights, environmental, labour standard and corruption issues
Developer
Responsible Business Solutions
Social Issue Channels
Human Rights
Economics
Poverty
Environment
Politics
Other
WolfQuest (0 comments)
Target Audience 7 and up
Description
WolfQuest is an interactive 3D wildlife simulation computer game. WolfQuest players take on the role of a wolf living in Yellowstone National Park. Through trial and error, instinct and experience, players learn about the life of a wolf as they hunt and interact with other wolves.
Developer
MN Zoo and eduweb
Social Issue Channels
Environment
Other
World Without Oil (0 comments)
Target Audience Description
WORLD WITHOUT OIL invited people worldwide to contribute “collective imagination” to confront a real-world issue: the risk our thirst for oil poses to our economy, climate and quality of life. It’s a milestone in the use of games as democratic, collaborative platforms for exploring possible futures and sparking future-changing action.
Developer
Writerguy LLA
Social Issue Channels
Submit a Game
Recommend a Game
G4C Features
In the News
Inside G4C
Feeds
September 2, 2010
Korea Serious Games Festival
October 13, 2010
WSIM 2010
October 21, 2010
ECGBL 2010 conference + NING on Game-Based Teaching
October 21, 2010
Meaningful Play 2010
October 26, 2010
Interactive Technologies and Games: Education, Health and Disability