Gaming for Social Change and the Environment: Microsoft Talks Games for Change Contest

"Gaming is such a powerful medium," chief XNA architect Chris Satchell told me earlier this week. "It really speaks to the generations that are growing up now, and it's a shame not to be able to use it to deliver a social message."

That's why, last summer, Microsoft partnered with Games for Change to host the Imagine Cup and challenge students worldwide to tackle social issues and encourage change through games.

This year's contest, based on the environment and powered by Microsoft's XNA Game Studio technology, received over 160 entries from 10,000 college-age students across 60 countries.

"[The environment is] a really important social issue, both sides agreed this is a social issue and it needs addressing," Satchell continued. "You just start riffing on it and, wow, there's so many cool games you could build around teaching people how to utilize the environment."

But what's really interesting is that, because these were all developed within XNA Game Studio, these games can be distributed on Windows and through the Xbox 360 community games service later this year. They actually have a shot at pushing social change.

For more about Games for Change, this year's six Imagine Cup finalists and XNA-powered social good, I'll turn it over to Satchell himself.

Chris Satchell: Games for Change is a non-profit organization that really tries to champion the advancement of social issues through gaming.

It's really trying to advance those social issues and social awareness through gaming.

So, how do we set social agenda and how do we create games that change people's perception of social agendas, like the environment, which was our topic for the Games for Change challenge we did with Xbox and the Games for Change Imagine Cup.

Shack: How do these games actually encourage social change?

Chris Satchell: One of the ones I really like is--and this is one of the top six finalists that we're showing today--it's a game called Future Flow, and the team from Belguim is called Drunk Puppy. Wonderful name.

Imagine a game that's sort of a hex-based puzzle game where each of the tiles is a sort of city resource, whether it's housing or a water treatment plant or solar collectors or a refinery.

What you're trying to do is connect all these pieces up together to have a functioning city, the city starts off not functioning. As you start using resources and connecting these pieces, your pollution goes up. You have to make some very smart choices.

So I just start off and I'm like, "Okay, I need research! Right, university connected to a power plant! I need people and connect them to farms." You know, as fast as I could, in my mind I'm preparing for that tank rush in an RTS game.

But you stop and you're like, "Oh, my pollution's through the roof. Now I've got to start being more sensible." And you start these really hard decisions, like, "I can use these resources for upgrades but if I use the standard power plant my pollution goes up. I'm gonna have to clear the space to make a solar panel plant."

What you really take away is just this need for balance, of trying to improve technology and people, trying to add new things to the city to make lives better, but also trying to not ruin the environment in the process and keep the emissions down. It's a really delicate balance you have to strike.

Shack: What about some of the other games?

Chris Satchell: Another one that I love, it's called City Rain by Mother Gaia Studios from Brazil.

Imagine Sim City crossed with Tetris. You're kinda playing on a 2D city grid and you've got to do normal things, like have police and have shopping, parks, and provide people with a nice environment. But you've also got to do eco-challenges, like "I need to go and research new ways to recycle materials to bring down my emissions." I do that by having universities and factories near a landfill. Dump a landfill in the wrong area and it'll pollute the rivers.

You're trying to manage this, but the fun thing is these city blocks are dropping like Tetris, and they're in different configurations. Sometimes they're individual, sometimes they're in blocks. You've got to move it around and build the right thing for the city, trying to balance what the populace is asking but what you need to do for the environment.

Shack: Since these games are powered by XNA, is there any chance they could be released on Xbox 360 or PC?

Chris Satchell: A lot of the students, they wanted to pick it up for free and use it on Windows, have built it on Windows. As you know, it's really easy to port to Xbox 360 using our technology.

When we do that distribution system [on Xbox 360] later this year, I think you will see these games coming out and reaching that huge audience on Xbox Live.

We haven't announced the peer review pipeline for Windows at the moment. Of course, there's nothing actually stopping them distributing them on Windows, so I think you'll probably see them on both platforms.

Turn the page for more on the Imagine Cup finalists, the future of Games for Change, and other XNA-powered social applications.

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Shack: How were the finalists chosen?

Chris Satchell: We had some judges, both from the Games for Change organization and from inside Xbox, that got together and vetted all the entries, really looked at them from the perspective of were they [educational] for the environment and were they fundamentally great games.

You've got to balance it, to have something people actually want to play. When people starting playing because it's fun, and it's got the social message, that's a cool thing.

I think it's part of our medium in gaming maturing. It's fine to have blockbusters that don't have a social message, but it's fun to have the other stream as well.

It's an important maturation process for our industry. Gaming is such a powerful medium. I mean, it really speaks to the generations that are growing up now, and it's a shame not to be able to use it to deliver a social message.

Of course you want fun and entertainment--that's what you get from movies and television--but there's no reason why you can't deliver a social message in some of the games.

Shack: Were all the of the submitted entries actual games, or were some of them applications like Folding@Home?

Chris Satchell: They were all games, but there are some of those applications, like Folding@Home, that I've heard going on with XNA around some of the academic institutions.

Shack: Can you tell me a bit more about those?

Chris Satchell: I don't have a lot of the details on me, but there's a really interesting one going on at University of Washington over in Seattle.

These premises like Folding@Home--I'm not saying this is Folding@Home, but processes like that--there's often a part that's really good to do with a computer, like number-crunching.

And there's a part that is really good to do with humans, like pattern matching. We're incredible at that compared with a lot of computing devices. One of the areas of research is, how do you actually make it from an application that uses processing resources that happen to be on a network to one that uses processing resources and that sort of human resource capacity that's attached.

How do we use the gamers out there that could do a really good job of--this isn't what the research is--spotting patterns or doing some other activity that humans are well suited for, in a fun and engaging way? It can speed up the research by orders of magnitude.

Shack: What's next for the Imagine Cup and its finalists?

Chris Satchell: From here, they go to Paris. We're holding the finals for the Imagine Cup in Paris between July 2 and 9, where we pick the overall winner.

There's some really great cash prizes. They have the chance to intern with Microsoft Game Studios, a really good opportunity to take a stepping stone into gaming.

The cash prizes need to be applied toward their education. They won't be going out and buying new cars unless they can somehow convince somebody that's desperate for their education.

Shack: The nice thing is they can go out and buy an Xbox 360 with a couple of games and argue that it's for their education.

Chris Satchell: [laughs] "It's just research! I need it!"

Shack: And what about the long-term future? Any plans for another competition?

Chris Satchell: We're still looking at that, what we think would be a great way to push this forward. It might be a competition, it might be something else.

We're brainstorming at the moment to see how we take this to the next level, especially considering that later this year we're going to have that distribution of community games on Xbox Live.