Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
11/20/2015
A program that promotes innovative ideas for nuclear disarmament is calling on the gaming community to develop digital game ideas to educate the public on the risk of nuclear weapons. N Square, a $2.4 million pilot program, has partnered with Games for Change, an organization that promotes the development of digital social impact games, in creating a nuclear safety design competition. The N Square Challenge “invites anyone, anywhere, to conceptualize a game that will engage and educate players about the dynamics of nuclear weapons risk” for a $10,000 cash prize, Games for Change said.
Last weekend, a Nuclear Risk Game Jam in Chicago engaged participants in “creative brainstorming and rapid prototyping sessions” and pitch development for “live role-playing games, tabletop and board games, and, of course, digital games,” according to the event announcement. Susanna Pollack, acting president of Games for Change, said that because gamers “have vast experience saving virtual worlds,” they may “help navigate how to save the real world from the threat of nuclear catastrophe.”
“Games are social by nature, and an excellent tool for experimenting with all kinds of systems—economic, social and cultural,” Pollack said in a press release. “Why not explore nuclear issues through a game?”
Games for Change reported that they have received over 100 competition entries so far, a number that N Square Director Erika Gregory said by email is more than the organization has ever received “for similar challenges with the same timeframe.” She said “multiplayer games provide a spirit of collaboration, optimism and focused problem solving that is needed to transform how the threat of nuclear weapons is addressed today.” Therefore, the initiative “may find solutions that have not yet been imagined,” she said. The goal, according to Gregory, is to increase public awareness of the threat posed by nuclear weapons “by encouraging new partners to bring us fresh ideas about how to invent our way out of a decades-old wicked problem.”
Gregory cited other gamer contributions to science and innovation as cause for optimism: In 2011, gamers produced a model of an enzyme from an AIDS-like disease that had stumped scientists for 13 years; in another instance, gamers contributed to “the discovery of 40 planets that could potentially support life, all of which had been previously missed by professional astronomers,” she said. They did this by searching for star patterns in a collection of data released by NASA called Planet Hunters.
Competition submissions are due via an online form by Nov. 22; the winner will be selected on Dec. 10. The winning idea “will be developed into a playable game and featured as part of a traveling pop-up innovation lab experience,” Games for Change said. N Square is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ploughshares Fund, and the Skoll Global Threats Fund.
