Everyone plays games, but why are so many of the most popular games about violence, inequality, and imperialism, and why do they misrepresent our communities for commercial gain? Can't they reflect the world we want to live in instead?
Imagining Better Futures Through Play at the Allied Media Conference is about promoting games and creative play as media for telling our own stories, for envisioning systemic change, and for building movements.
But what does it take to make a game? You don't need hundreds of people and thousands of dollars. We want to bring together anyone who has a love for games and a desire to build a more just and creative world to share ideas and skills. We are looking for workshops that help game designers, both novice and experienced, develop conceptual and technical skills so they can create fun, powerful, world-changing games.
We are seeking sessions that do one or more of these things:
- Share technical skills related to game creation
- Demonstrate how issues and movements can be explored and expressed through games
- Challenge assumptions about what games are and what they can do
- Actively include and represent people who are marginalized by mainstream games and gaming
- Empower participants to begin or continue working on a prototype
Example workshops from past AMCs
- Go Fish: Roleplaying Food Justice
- Making Revolutionary Video Games with Verbs
- Open Source Virtual Worlds
- Classic Board Games for Creative Action
- Science of the Oppressed as Artivism
Imagining Better Futures Through Play intends to discuss all types of games, whether they are tabletop, electronic, movement-based, role-playing, etc. Game on!
Proposals are due March 8, 2013 at midnight.
You may post comments or questions for the organizers on the Imagining Better Futures Through Play discussion page on AMPtalk.
