Asi Burak: Video games, like any other media, can really make change,
[TEXT: Asi Burak, Board Director, Games for Change]
can really impact our society, how we view the world around us.
Erin Reynolds: Games naturally challenge people with problems that they may not face in the real world,
[TEXT: Erin Reynolds, Founder, Flying Mollusk]
and they have to think about certain issues in ways that they’ve never thought about them before.
Lindsay Grace: Live a day in, say, a homeless person’s shoes within a simulation.
[TEXT: Lindsay Grace, Director, American University Game Lab]
It helps people understand that their outside view is not very well- informed,
and so they get a better perspective. And they change perspective.
Burak: If I wanted to get someone to understand what Games for Change is,
I would get three of the best games, get them to play them for 10 minutes.
You don’t need more than that.
[TEXT: Games for change, making a social impact]
Burak: When I came to the U.S. from Israel, I decided to create a game called PeaceMaker,
a simulation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
You could actually broker peace between the two states.
Many people said, “It’s crazy. Who’s going to want to play a game about the Middle East?”
It got tons of press, as you can imagine, because what people knew about video game is
games are the most horrible things out there.
Reynolds: In the game Nevermind, you go inside the subconscious mind of psychological trauma victims.
Trauma can be so many different things, has so many different faces, so many different stories.
We want to have players walk away with maybe a better understanding
and a little bit more empathy for what trauma might mean,
because it’s something that a lot of people deal with but don’t want to talk about.
Burak: In Half the Sky, it’s all about humanitarian issues. It’s about women’s empowerment.
And we don’t want only to reach people in the U.S.,
we want to reach people in India, we want to affect people in Kenya.
It raised more than half a million dollars for books and surgeries that go to NGOs, to people in countries.
Isabela Granic: In MindLight, the goal is to keep relaxed.
This is the neurofeedback headset that it comes with,
[TEXT: Isabela Granic, CEO, Play Nice Institute]
and there’s one sensor right here at the front that is reading your brain waves.
And the more relaxed you are, the bigger your mind light grows in the game.
We have been trying to teach kids if you change the way you think, then the world out there looks different.
It’s an incredibly powerful metaphor.
Burak: Games are not only exciting for social change, they have some attributes that are really unique.
They are interactive, you can make decisions, you can get the consequences.
In a way, you pave your own way.
Grace: I think the sense of a geek culture in games has actually evolved.
There are more people making different games, and the diversity of play has changed as well.
Prince Fahad Al Saud: We are not, as a region, discussing our diversity,
introducing the world into our environment and our home and our norm.
[TEXT: Prince Fahad Al Saud, Founder, NA3M Games]
So I wanted to build a space that allowed me to tell and highlight the diversity in the Arab world.
Matt Conn: It’s important that we create queer characters in games.
[TEXT: Matt Conn, Founder, GaymerX, CEO, MidBoss]
If you have a kid who is a girl or queer or a person of color,
and they are playing games and don’t see themselves being represented in those games,
they’re going to assume that those games aren’t made for them.
Amy Fredeen: For the Never Alone game project, our youth aren’t connecting to our culture
[TEXT: Amy Fredeen, Executive Vice President, Cook Inlet Tribal Council]
and our history the same way they always have.
So we wanted to create that really gentle invitation for them to reconnect
with their traditional stories and their art forms.
Al Saud: What I hope is to truly be a positive force in this world
that allows individuals — no matter who they are, what they believe in,
where they come from, what sexual orientation they are — to better their life, to communicate with the world.
Barak: My dream is that one day we’ll be like the film industry.
It’s obvious that you can make a very serious movie that deals with real-world issues,
but you can also be successful financially and get critical acclaim.
That’s what I want games to be.
[TEXT: Change comes in many forms]
[TEXT: Produced by the U.S. Department of State]