About the Center for Games & Impact
The Center for Games & Impact (CGI), launched in 2012, at Arizona State University is part of the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. The Center’s mission is to investigate, innovate, and cultivate games and game-infused solutions to society’s biggest challenges because we envision a world where we understand and optimize the unique power of games for learning and social impact. Building upon the vision of ASU President Michael Crow for a New American University, the Center for Games & Impact is committed to excellence, access, impact and research that contributes to the public good.
Read more: CGI Theory of Change, CGI Impact Based Research
Our Leadership
The Center was founded and launched in 2012 by ASU Teachers College Professors Sasha Barab and James Paul Gee, in partnership with E-Line Media Founder, Alan Gershenfeld. In 2014, Professor Elisabeth Gee was appointed to the position of Associate Director.
Sasha Barab, Executive Director
James Paul Gee, Adviser
Alan Gershenfeld, Founding Industry Fellow
Elizabeth Gee, Associate Director
Studio Partner
The E-Line Media partnership is founded on the premise that unlocking and utilizing the power of games and game-infused learning to genuinely engage, educate and empower our youth is a challenging, but solvable problem. It requires a deeply committed, fully integrated world class team that spans core competencies in learning sciences, content domains, research methodologies, game development and ‘double-line’ publishing mechanisms for game-infused learning products and services built on sustainable models that can be continually optimized for effectiveness and scaled implementation.
Read more: CGI/E-Line Studio Partnership
Innovation Lab
The Games & Impact Innovation Lab is a research and development lab for accelerating human potential. The Center is committed to uncovering, iterating, and testing game mechanics and game-infused experiences to address society’s biggest challenges. Our lab supports this through providing the space for interns, students, and industry partners to build powerful innovations that will advance the knowledge of the field and produce powerful design mechanics for fostering impact. We provide hands-on apprenticeship experiences to learn more about games and impact through playing games, creating impact materials, tinkering with game mechanics, all as part of a carefully thought through trajectory of growth through which participants can level up. At the core of unlocking the power of game-infused technologies is understanding and supporting their integration into the ecosystems where they are implemented. We are also working with games and impact stakeholders, content specialists, and target audiences to ensure the real-world value of these activities.
Read more: CGI Impact Guides created by Innovation Lab students to support meaningful play with commercial and learning games
Certificate Program
The Certificate is a full plan of work and study, building from an introductory core course through a customized capstone project. Students will be expected to demonstrate expertise in applying games for impact principles to their core areas of interest and solid skills in at least one facet of the process of designing, implementing and evaluating games for impact as part of their capstone work. The Certificate is a significant commitment to a sequenced set of courses across a student’s undergraduate years, rather than a series of courses that may simply be taken in passing. The sequence has been developed to equip students with the skills, research, ambition, and entrepreneurial base to continue to cultivate and curate these ideas beyond the university setting into the public domain—an essential element of our model of impact.
Read more: Games & Impact Certificate courses and program information