Early Registration Opens For Games For Change Conference

The organizers of Games for Change have launched the early registration website for the 2006 conference on "Social Change and Digital Games" - the 3rd annual event will be co-hosted on June 27 and 28 with the New School in New York City's Greenwich Village. At the conference, experts in the area of using digital games to address pressing issues will examine the impact of current games and preliminary work to build the field. The event will feature keynote addresses by Steven Johnson, author of noted bestseller "Everything Bad is Good for You", and Bob Kerrey, The New School president. Featured speakers include Josh Fouts, executive director of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, Connie Yowell, senior program officer, MacArthur Foundation, Heather Chaplin and Aaron Ruby, authors of "Smart Bomb," game maker Asi Burak of PeaceMaker, the UW-Madison's David Williamson Shaffer, representatives from MTV and the Museum of the Moving Image, David Rejeski, director of the Foresight and Governance Project at the Wilson Center, and Katie Salen, acting director of the Design and Technology Center at the New School. Panel topics will include “Games for Global Peace”, “Creating a PBS for Games”, “Academic Evaluation Efforts”, “Recent Funding Initiatives”, “Health and Environmental Awareness Campaigns”, and “Guerrilla Nonprofit Games”. This year's featured games will include the public diplomacy game Peacemaker, where Isreali and Palestinian youth play together, and Darfur is Dying, a narrative-based simulation where the user, from the perspective of a displaced Darfurian, negotiates forces that threaten the survival of his or her refugee camp. Detailed coverage of the 2005 Games For Change event, which was held at the City University of New York from October 21 to 22 2005, is available in feature form on Gamasutra, for those interested in finding out more about last year's agenda.