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Presentation Info

Title

Gaming Against Violence: History and Evolution of Bespoke Prosocial Video Games for Violence Prevention

Summary

Gaming Against Violence, a program of the Atlanta-based NGO Jennifer Ann's Group, has produced and published intentionally designed bespoke prosocial video games for youth violence prevention since 2008 through an annual game design competition. Despite its humble origins, the program has been featured by outlets including The Hollywood Reporter, Wired, NPR, France 24, Univision, Polygon, Huffington Post, and the Games for Health Journal. The games have been developed in collaboration with game studios, NGOs, and indie developers in over 20 countries. More than 70 games have been produced and more than 100,000 young people have played the games. The talk will follow a historical overview of Gaming Against Violence starting with its initial goals. A discussion of the various impacts, challenges, and research will provide an understanding of the program's evolution. First, is the creation of the program, designed to meet the needs of its nonprofit organization. Initial games narrowly focused on prevention of teen dating violence, a form of IPV (intimate partner violence), with primary goals of increased awareness and knowledge transfer. Second, research published in journals and community engagement indicated the games were accomplishing more than the initial goals. The games were also found to be effective tools for persuasion, adding the goal of changes in attitude or behaviour. This led to the games being used to address more challenging topics, including the issue of consent during the ""me too"" movement. The success and impact of these new persuasive games supported further expansion by adding other IPV related topics such as healthy relationships and gaslighting. Third, COVID's impact on the mental and emotional health of young people prompted a need to evolve into a broader trauma-informed public health approach. Since 2020 the program has broadly followed the Social Ecological Model, focusing on topics shown to be protective factors against violence: critical thinking, healthy communication, media literacy, and social connectedness. This supports young people, their relationships, and their communities. Fourth, these newer topics are more mainstream and therefore easier to integrate into educational curricula. While the goals remain the same, the topics are less controversial and more palatable to school administrators and parents. In January 2025, a program portal for educators will launch, providing an easy tool for educators to access games and associated lesson plans for classroom use. And in June 2025 and June 2026, this portal will be used in an NIH-funded program at Emory University to teach early career researchers how to use these prosocial games in their communities for violence prevention. Participants will be taught about how and why these games are effective by our program director. The goal of the NIH grant is prevention of IPV related homicides for pregnant and post-partum women. Throughout the talk there will be insights offered about challenges, lessons learned, and best practices for producing and publishing video games intended to prevent violence. At the end of the proposed talk the Finalists for the 2025 game design challenge will be announced.

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