13th Annual Life. Love. Game Design Challenge

Register by March 20 2020

Since 2008 Jennifer Ann's Group, a nonprofit charity, has had an annual game design challenge to reward game designers and developers for creating violence-free video games about issues that impact young people. The annual game competition has been covered by Wired, Kotaku, Polygon, NPR, Newsweek, and many more!

Prizes

$10,000 first place

$2,000 second place

$500 third place

$100 door prize (randomly selected from non-winning games)

The winning published games will be featured on our game portal and on our GameJolt page. We also promote the winning games and work with researchers to evaluate their effectivenss. Just in the past year several previous winning games were honored:

• Another Chance; Power & Control, both evaluated in a research study published in Journal of Games, Self, & Society (2019)

• Rispek Danis, official nominee at 2019 Games for Change Awards for 'most significant impact' (2019)

• ADRIFT, re-created in life-size and featured in exhbition at MOD. museum in Australia (2019)

• HONEYMOON, featured in Learning, Education, & Games Volume 3 (2019)

• Lamplight Hollow, winner, JungleJam (2020)

We believe in the power of video games to help young people!

Theme

Last year's theme was gaslighting. This year's is culture.

What is the impact of culture on dating and relationships?

If you have an idea for a violence-free video game that explores and examines how culture affects our beliefs about dating please register for this year's contest! We will select the finalists from those who present the most compelling game pitch. The finalists will then have until July to develop their game.

Game pitches are due by March 20 2020.

Judges

All finalist entries will be reviewed by judges who are experts in video game design or violence prevention. This year's judges will be announced soon but over the years judges have included many experts from the video game world:

Leigh Alexander, Gamasutra / Reigns: Her Majesty

Harley Baldwin, Schell Games

Dr. Ian Bogost, Georgia Tech / Persuasive Games

Maria Burns Ortiz, 7 Generation Games

Dan Butchko, Playcrafting

Simon Carless, GDC / IGF

Brian Crecente, Kotaku / Polygon / Rolling Stone / Variety

Sabrina Culyba, Schell Games / Global Game Jam

Nina Freeman, Fullbright

Andrew Greenberg, Georgia Game Developers Association

Dr. Jennifer Hazel, CheckPoint Games

Dr. Ruud Jacobs, University of Twente

David Langendoen, Electric Funstuff

Jane McGonigal, SuperBetter

Dr. Brooke Morrill, Schell Games

Sam Potasznik, PlayGood Games

Dr. Jon Preston, Kennesaw State University

Ben Sawyer, Games for Health

Stephen Totilo, MTV

Peter Willington, Auroch Digital / Bristol Games Hub

More Information

For more information and to register please visit the official contest website: JAGga.me/culture

Feel free to ask questions here and we'll do our best to answer them but we hope that we've answered most of the questions already at the contest website.