Games for Change

And whether it lasted for 10 years or 100 doesn't necessarily mean that one was successful and the other wasn't.

Because right around the same time that Rachel was looking at the metaverse and the Gainesburg team, I had gone to a place called Games for Change, which is a nonprofit organization that does online gaming for social justice causes.

And I thought, you know, what if? That's kind of my question.

Where Rachel is making room for leaders in collaboration, I keep saying, can we use this? Like, is this viable? What is, what, what if we play with this? Like what happens? Right.

It was a grant.

That's how we got that.

So with Games for Change, though, I started thinking about the church, and I started to play with an idea called prevenient technology.

Like, what would it look like to house the kind of technology the church doesn't even know that it needs yet? And I actually had a conversation with a couple of bishops of potentially developing something like the General Board of Research and Development.

And then we just want to be able to know and appreciate that.

Yeah, and I learned a few weeks ago through the organization Games for Change and a report they had come out that a lot of kids want their parents to be more involved and ask more questions.

And this was specifically for video games.

But I think the stat was like 60% of kids want to play with their parents, want their parents to learn about the game, want their... want their parents to be interested in what they're interested in.

They launched in 2023 to champion developers from, well, sort of obvious, the Midwest, if anybody can't tell from the branding, and other overlooked regions, and today runs a traditional invest-in-revenue share publishing arm alongside Shadow Publishing, a for-hire service model that lets developers keep their IP and revenue entirely.

I've actually already had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Ben at our talk at Games for Change this past July in New York City.

And I'm very excited to welcome here onto the Novick Airwaves and live at the Etzola Clubhouse studio.

How's it going, Ben?

I want to talk a little bit about your, the financing in the new financing area, and particularly actually for you yourselves.

I mean, Alnavik, you know, our, our, our mantra is we're discussing the business of games and, and actually your business.

Um, I remember you saying actually at the Games for Change thing that we were on together that, you know, a few years ago, no one would have actually funded a publisher like yourself.

But however, you prevailed.

We believe there are no small games, only small game studios.

Before we dive into the episode, just a little reminder to stay through the end because we have a really, really, really cool discussion with a couple friends of ours who got to attend the Games for Change Festival in New York and had an amazing time.

And we are very lucky that we got to recap the event and hear their highlights and everything.

So stick around at the end to hear that discussion.

yeah oh god we um you know what we had a lot to talk about today but we were fucking efficient we were speedy um but it's not over yet that's right Because we're about to hear from two amazing people who also happen to be our friends.

And we are so lucky that they are our friends.

And they joined us to talk a little bit about the Games for Change Festival in New York back in July.

So we have a little recap of the event and some cool highlights coming up for you next.

But they say it's been nearly six decades since the first mainstream video games came out.

And parents in 2026 are just as worried about the potential impact gaming is having on their children today as their counterparts were in the 70s and on, according to new research from the nonprofit Games for Change group.

Okay.

In her paper, Raising Good Gamers, What Families Need to Know About Video Games and Well-Being, which this was released in July for the Games for Change nonprofit, the research director, Rachel Cowart, drew an analysis of nearly 200,000 media articles and social posts across 15 different countries and seven languages to reveal on social media negative sentiment about gaming outweighs positive sentiment by more than 5 to 1.

That's pretty crazy.

It is.

Show up with curiosity, play together, adjust for content, of course, cultivate digital citizenship, and establish boundaries together.

It's interestingly an argument for allowing gameplay at a younger age so that you do start to build a foundation.