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The positive power of games

Photo by Gabi Porter Dark Knight, bright future: the Games For Change Festival focuses on addressing social responsibility and giving voice to isolated cultures.
Photo by Gabi Porter
Dark Knight, bright future: the Games For Change Festival focuses on addressing social responsibility and giving voice to isolated cultures.

BY CHARLES BATTERSBY | Videogames are sometimes viewed as mindless time-wasters and murder simulators — but games have been a narrative art form for decades. Modern game designers use their work to address social responsibility, give voice to isolated cultures, and generate empathy. Founded in 2004, the Games For Change Festival focuses on this sort of game and the people who make them. Its most recent incarnation, held last week as part of the Tribeca Film Festival, featured games from around the world that are intended to showcase the positive power of games.

Held primarily at the NUY Skirball Center, this year’s festival ran for five days, and included panels given by teams of game designers and journalists. A highlight of the panels was a talk about the game development tool Twine. It is a free program that can be used to create text-based games, a form of interactive storytelling similar to “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. It is particularly effective at letting one-person development teams create short but powerful empathy games based on personal experiences. The festival included a series of 10-minute “minitalks” that addressed highly specialized topics like LGBT issues in games, how to market niche products, and creating games that explore health care and mental health.

Attendees could also visit the NYU Skirball Center near Washington Square Park to get hands-on experience with over a dozen games selected by the festival for their social impact, and to celebrate game development communities in smaller nations.

Among the playable games was “Never Alone.” Developed by Upper One Games, the first Native American-owned video game company, it won the festival’s Game of the Year Award. Based on several Native Alaskan folk tales, an Iñupiat girl goes on an adventure to save her village from an eternal blizzard, accompanied by a helpful arctic fox. Players can switch between the girl and the fox, and there is an option to have two players cooperate as they play, with each player controlling one character. Each character has their own special abilities, and they have to help each other solve puzzles. This forces players to cooperate, and use their heads, rather than relying on reflexes alone.

In addition to playing through stories inspired by Native Alaskan culture, there is also a series of documentary videos included with the game. These “Cultural Insights” feature interviews with Iñupiat people, and are unlocked as the Player progresses through the game. “Never Alone” also won the award for Most Significant Impact.

Games set during wartime are commonplace, but in “This War of Mine,” players aren’t lucky enough to be super soldiers. This game is about the civilians caught between two sides of a war. At the start of the game, the players are given a random group of civilians who have to scavenge for supplies in the bombed out ruins of their neighborhood. Food, medicine and fuel are extremely scarce, and players will often be put in morally challenging circumstances, like stealing food from other people, turning away survivors who are seeking shelter, or even killing innocent people to acquire badly-needed supplies.

Aside from their physical needs, each character in the household faces emotional and psychological dangers. The goal of the game is to survive until a ceasefire is declared, but the Player does not know when that will come. They, and the characters they control, must endure their hardships for a seemingly endless period. The characters can become so hopeless and despondent, they will lie in bed all day, unable to work, and in some cases characters will commit suicide to escape their despair.

It is an emotionally brutal experience, and most players can expect to be met with failure many times before actually surviving to the ceasefire. “This War of Mine” won the festival’s award for Best Gameplay.

Dancing games have been around for decades. In the past they used special floor pads that sense when the Player steps on them. More recently they use motion-sensing cameras to track the Player’s movements. The game “Bounden” doesn’t require any special equipment. It is an app for mobile phones that requires nothing more than a phone and a dancing partner to play. The players each hold one side of the phone, and must twist and swing the device to move a spherical icon on the screen. The app uses the motion-sensing accelerometer built into the phone to sense the players’ movements. The icons on screen guide the two dancers in choreography created by the Dutch National Ballet, and players will end up dancing without even realizing it. “Bounden” won the festival’s award for Most Innovative.

Also on the show floor was a selection of games called Gamedev.world Arcade. These games were curated by Rami Ismail of indie developer Vlambeer, in cooperation with voice actress Sarah Elmaleh. They represent the development communities in countries with large non-English speaking populations

A fun inclusion to Gamedev.world was Broforce, a satirical action game made by the South African developer Free Lives Games. It parodies American ’80s action movies, and lets players take control of a “Bro” who blasts his way through levels full of bad guys. At the end of each level, the hero plants an American flag and declares the zone “Liberated.” Beneath the action and humor is thoughtful message about addressing complex global political issues with brute force.

Photo by Gabi Porter Aside from playing on computers and staring into screens, the festival also had a Public Arcade that encouraged people to play outdoors.
Photo by Gabi Porter
Aside from playing on computers and staring into screens, the festival also had a Public Arcade that encouraged people to play outdoors.

Aside from playing on computers and staring into screens, the festival also had a “Public Arcade” that encouraged people to play outdoors. Among the experiences was a “Zombies Versus Superheroes” game that taught about real world disaster preparedness using the theme of a zombie outbreak. Attendees could dress in superhero costumes and were chased by actors dressed as zombies.

The Games For Change Festival is an annual event. More about upcoming festivals can be found at GamesForChange.org.

Charles Battersby is a playwright, actor and video game journalist who has written for sites including Complex, Joystiq, Explosion, Automaton and Dusty Cartridges. Charles founded the organization Press XY, which presents panels and seminars on transgender issues in video games. Visit charlesbattersby.com. Twitter: @charlesbattersb.