The 2023 Games for Change Awards celebrate the year’s best games and XR experiences for social impact and learning. All awards are competitive, and submissions go through three rounds of evaluation from panels of experts, including leaders in games, learning, social impact, media, and technology play games. All games must fall within the broad confines of being a ‘game for change,’ addressing real-world challenges, improving people’s lives, driving social change, serving as critical tools in humanitarian and educational efforts, inspiring learning, encouraging empathy, or making a difference. At the end of the evaluation, G4C distinguishes four finalists in each award category. Come join us in celebrating the year’s most stand out projects, people, and organizations making a meaningful difference.
New for 2023, the Best Board or Tabletop Game for Impact category recognizes physical tabletop games that raise awareness, foster meaningful change, and engage players around learning objectives or specific social issues. The judging criteria looks at if the game takes advantage of the unique affordances of the physical medium (tactile pieces, thematic ties, replayability, and game length) to reinforce a memorable and resonant experience for the player, examines how and to what degree does the game address a specific social issue or learning goal, to what degree can the team measure their impact on that issue, asks what impact does the game have on its audience and how does the overall game experience affect the player, and questions to what extent is the development team collaborating with external stakeholders or subject matter experts to develop, evaluate, and verify a theory of change.
Solarpunk Futures is an artist’s game for collaborative utopian visioning, working in (and against) the conventions of tabletop role-playing, whereby players use backcasting and modified consensus to collectively ‘remember’ the stories of how their ancestors built a social ecological utopia.
Solarpunk Futures is a project by Solarpunk Surf Club, led by members Nick Lyell and Max Puchalsky (MFA ’20), with Kyle Herrera (MFA ’20) and former Art Lecturer Bo.