Countries throughout the world have games for the purposes of maintaining a national identity, in the United States baseball is considered America’s favorite pastime. Within the context of activism, indie game developers create online video games to raise social justice awareness, promote civic participation, and enact social justice. As the importance of digital literacy increases, schools are now beginning to consider the possibility of leveraging the power of video games for teaching students New Literacies such as systems thinking. Meanwhile, other types of games such as those used for gambling in Nevada generate a massive market-based state economy based on adult entertainment. Corporations have also leveraged the purpose of entertainment in popular culture to generate billions of dollars in annual profits through the production and marketing of video games played primarily by young people. Aside from popular culture, Indigenous peoples around the world use place-based games for prayer, healing, learning, entertainment, and resolving disputes. Through all of the examples above, it is clear that the emergence of our cultures is influenced by games.

Throughout history, games have been a tool or technology that have been constructed, enacted, and handed down to all of us from our ancestors. They are dynamic spaces through which cultural practices emerge. To name a few, these practices are meant to support story, play, ritual, dialogue, learning, collaboration, and competition. Because games embody these essential social meaning-making activities, they are positioned by societies to serve a variety of purposes. In developed nations, video games are now one of the central mediating forces of popular culture, they are digitally mediated, and disseminated online. Emerging technologies enable video games to be portable, networked, interactive, and pervasive. Like other forms of digital media, it is a communications technology whose messages for better or for worse, help to shape the emergence of our cultures and realities. We are committed to supporting the development of game based projects that contribute toward the vitality and emergence of the cultures from which they derive. As an extension to this, we are also interested in facilitating cross-cultural partnerships that demonstrate game innovations that scale in ways that can be appropriately shared across cultures.

Key Questions: How do we assess the cultural impacts of video games that depict racism, sexism, and violence? Since many commercial video games contain these elements, how do we determine the role that these games play in the structuring of society? How can we use video games to promote social changes that neutralize racism, sexism, and violence? How do we develop culturally responsive ethics frameworks for the development of video games that promote wellness and informal learning in our communities? How do we build local place-based digital literacy capacities that allow peoples around the world to communicate ideas and solve problems through video games? How do subjugated populations construct and use video games to achieve political legitimacy and self-determination? Can games support meaningful intergenerational relationships? If so, how can this be achieved? Can video games promote social gatherings that take place in shared physical space?