The Games for Change Festival (G4C) APRIL 21-23 & 25 in New York City was the leading international event bringing together games creators and people with a belief in the positive potential of digital games. The G4C Awards recognize engaging, creative and innovative games that have a positive social message. Many of these games set out to teach new life-skills or new cognitive skills and in this way are expanding and transforming notions of e-learning.
The game NEVER ALONE (Kisima Ingitchuna) from E-line Media is a finalist in two categories in the G4C Awards. In this game players take on the role of Nuna, a young Iñupiat girl, who sets out with her companion, an artic fox, to discover the cause of an endless blizzard that is threatening the survival of everything she knows. In the journey looking for a way to save Nuna’s village, players must cross frozen tundra, leap between hazardous ice-floes, swim through underwater caverns and confront strange enemies.
However the ideas animating NEVER ALONE are to bring to life the cultural traditions, stories and experiences of the Iñupiat Native Alaskan people, and to teach the core Iñupiat values of resilience and interdependence. The game was developed in collaboration with the Cook Inlet Tribal Council, and it involves the participation of around 40 Alaskan Native elders and story-tellers who contributed traditional stories and personal experiences. You can see the NEVER ALONE Game Trailer and Behind the Scenes clips at www.neveralonegame.com
For more details about the Games for Change Festival see: www.gamesforchange.org/festival/
