17th Annual
Life.Love. Game Design Challenge

The 2024 prosocial game design theme is:

Connectedness Games

For the seventeenth annual game design challenge the focus is social connectedness, a protective factor for all people, especially adolescents, which supports physical and mental health.

The Finalists will be designing and developing their connectedness games throughout Spring 2024.

We look forward to sharing the new connectedness games in Fall 2024.

Connectedness Games Overview
A whimsical black and white illustration of a dozen pets, only their paws and faces are showing. There is a mix of cats and dogs as well as one rabbit. A few have thought bubbles above their heads with images of a fish or dog bone. One dog has small hearts fluttering over its head. All of these small animals are standing closely to one another and looking at the viewer.

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 offers a special award just for students. The Hope Givers Student Gaming Award is for a game created by a middle school or high school student.

The game design challenge theme for 2024 is 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 runs 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 will design and develop the connecting game based on their game pitch from Stage One. Our panel of expert judges will then evaluate, score, and critique the completed connectedness games.

Previous Winning Games
Critical thinking game: MushWhom? Educational Edition. A charming and challenging game of observation and deduction.

MushWhom?

The Educational Version of this critical thinking game offers in-game classroom resources. The game is a cute, colorful, and challenging exercise in observation and deduction skills.

ADRIFT - a consent game appropriate for all ages.

ADRIFT

This is a consent game appropriate for all ages. It takes 15-30 minutes to play this award-winning game about consent. ADRIFT was featured in an exhibit at the MOD museum in Australia!

HONEYMOON - a healthy relationship game for adolescents.

HONEYMOON

This vibrantly illustrated healthy relationship game explores the "honeymoon" phase in a first-time dating relationship. Players select their gender and also the gender of their dating partner.