![An image using the theme for the Connecting Games Game Design Challenge. The background is similar to a light blue sky with transparent clouds. At the top-center is a 70s style logo: 'Connecting.Games' with an iconic smiling face in place of the dot. Below is a rounded frame containing information and screenshots for the five winning video games. [Descriptions for the screenshots of the winning video games is not provided.]
1st Place
'Open Worlds Play'
Sunny Chen
2nd Place
'The Titli Effect'
Anurati Srivastva, Sana Alimohamed, Charu Tak, Divya Tak
3rd Place
'Local'
GatherRound Games
4th Place
'Dear Archibald'
Elaine Fath
Carnegie Mellon University Center for Transformational Play
5th Place
'The Orb of Harmony'
Carter Semrad
.](images/ConnectingGames--Winning-Games.jpg)
Connectedness Game Design Challenge: Overview
Gaming Against Violence™, an award-winning program from the nonprofit charity Jennifer Ann's Group®, produces prosocial games to improve the lives of young people worldwide.
The 2024 game design challenge offered a special award just for students. The Hope Givers Student Gaming Award was for a game created by a middle school or high school student.
The game design challenge theme for 2024 was connectedness.
Since 2008
This annual game design challenge has run every year since 2008. We have worked with a diverse range of game designers, developers, artists, and writers from nearly 20 countries to share these prosocial video games.
Violence prevention
Although some people associate video games with violence, we believe intentionally designed video games are the most effective and efficient way to prevent violence.
Game topics
Prosocial video games from our program address many important themes. These include: bystander awareness, consent, critical thinking, gaslighting, healthy relationships, media literacy, resilience, and teen dating violence prevention.
Gaming Against Violence
Gaming Against Violence is the award-winning program that offers this game design challenge. The program produces, publishes, researchs, and champions prosocial video games for violence prevention. It is a program developed by Jennifer Ann's Group, a 501(c)(3) public charity.
Prosocial video games
We believe video games are a great way to engage young people about important issues to help them live happier, healthier lives. This is especially true for sensitive topics. Our video games provide a private, self-paced experience for teens wanting to learn about issues like consent and healthy dating relationships.
Connecting games competition process
The contest took place in two stages. For Stage One, entrants had to submit a game pitch narrative about your connectedness game by March 17, 2024. A group of Finalists were selected based on their game pitch to participate in Stage Two. During Stage Two, Finalists designed and developed the connecting game based on their game pitch from Stage One. Our panel of expert judges then evaluated, scored, and critiqued the completed connectedness games.
