Game Design Contest for Teen Dating Violence Prevention

My brother just launched a Flash game design contest that I'll be one of the judges for. The object of the Life Love Game Design Challenge is for people to create a Flash game about teen dating violence prevention and to do so without violent content or a violent theme.

Quite a brain teaser, but having played innovative Flash games for years now, I'm pretty sure the design community is up to the challenge.

First prize is $1,000 and judges, besides myself, include Simon Carless, director of the Independent Games Festival; Stephen Totilo, of MTV and huge brain fame, and Dr. Elizabeth Richeson, a psychologist, Texas Psychological Association Board member, and my mom.

When my brother first contacted me about this, he said he wasn't sure that it was a good idea, he didn't know if a Flash game could deal with so serious an issue, but I pointed out that people like Ian Bogost do that for a living.

Life Love Game Design Challenge

Nick Yee had an unenviable task last week.

The Stanford research assistant and massively multiplayer online gaming expert was flown in to Denver to explain online gaming to a room full of criminal investigators, educators and internet safety experts from area district attorney offices, police departments and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Yee, whose landmark Daedalus Project continues to study behavior in MMOs, hoped to present to these members of Qwest Colorado Coalition for Online Safety a take on online gaming that they may not have heard before: That it can actually be good for you.

Reuters has an interesting story up about MindHabits Trainer, a game developed by researchers at McGill University in Montreal which is meant to cut down on your stress, increase your confidence and make you a happier person.

The very simple game get you to look at a series of pictures and click on the faces that are smiling, avoiding the frowners. By doing this five to ten minutes a day the game has shown to help people feel less stressed and have higher self esteem.

I played around with the game this morning and find it very interesting. There are actually four different games, all of which are about getting you to accentuate the positive in your mind. I could totally see something like this hitting the DS. It seems like a perfect fit.

Online game smiles seen vanquishing the blues [ZDnet, thanks to my big bro Drew]

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