The serious game initiative est une initiative dédiée à la diffusion de l’utilisation des jeux vidéo pour la santé (Games for health), l’écologie (Games for change) et l’apprentissage. En deux mots : des jeux sérieux. Parmi leurs actions: l’organisation de la games+learning+society Conference 2010.
“The Serious Games Initiative is focused on uses for games in exploring management and leadership challenges facing the public sector. Part of its overall charter is to help forge productive links between the electronic game industry and projects involving the use of games in education, training, health, and public policy.”
The Serious Games Initiative founded Games for Health to develop a community and best practices platform for the numerous games being built for health care applications. To date the project has brought together researchers, medical professionals, and game developers to share information about the impact games and game technologies can have on health care and policy.
Games for Change (G4C) is a non-profit which seeks to harness the extraordinary power of video games to address the most pressing issues of our day, including poverty, education, human rights, global conflict and climate change. G4C acts as a voice for the transformative power of games, bringing together organizations and individuals from the nonprofit sector, government, journalism, academia, industry and the arts, to grow the sector and provide a platform for the exchange of ideas and resources. Through this work, Games for Change promotes new kinds of games that engage contemporary social issues in meaningful ways to foster a more just, equitable and tolerant society.
I.e.:
- 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.
- 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.
- Connect to climate is a social initiative program to reach out to youth on issues of Environment, Climate Change awareness and Green technologies through the medium of vaiety of Mobile and Desktop games. Initailly 3 mobile phone games namely Polar Teddy, Mission Lighting and DeCarbonator are launched on Mobile networks in India. The Desktop games namely Copenhagen Challenge, Great Save and Climate Mela are launched.
- 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.
- Global warming interactive is a web based multi-user educational game which explores the relationship of global warming to economic, political and science policy decisions. The game is driven by a systems dynamics model and is presented in a user friendly interface intended for the high school user.