The many flavors of Unity for Humanity

Games for impact is a broad and diverse world, and a lot of different projects can fall under this umbrella we’re calling “Unity for Humanity.” Each of these approaches (or a combination of them) can produce a strong UFH grant application, with examples of 2023 grantees shown below.

There are three categories successful UFH grant applications fall into; 1) Games that include issues or ideas, 2) Games about issues or ideas, and 3) Games to impact issues or ideas. Let's take a look at each category.

Games that include issues or ideas

This category includes games that might not have the issue at their center, but include it in a meaningful and resonant way. 

• Never Alone: Primarily a puzzle platform game, Never Alone is based on a story from the Iñupiaq tradition, and was made in partnership with indigenous storytellers and developers.
• Year of the Cicadas is a game that explores finding meaning in personal loss based on the creator’s own experience. 

Games about issues or ideas

This category includes games where the subject matter and action of the game are central, though the actual effect may not be measured. 

• Papers, Please: A first-person experience of an immigration officer in a fictional country. The player must confront issues of fairness, discrimination, and international conflict.
• Following the Investigation: Inside the ICC (2023 grantee) is a VR experience about proceedings at the International Criminal Court (ICC), helping players to better understand the processes and methods of the ICC.

Games to impact issues or ideas

Educational games can be thought of as fitting this category, as can activist games where the hope is to change people’s beliefs or behaviors. 

• Dumb Ways to Die: A game (and video/song) made for the Australian Rail Authority emphasizing railroad safety. Presented in an interactive, humorous fashion to be memorable especially among young people.
• World Reborn is an augmented reality (AR) experience that engages young people to encourage them to personally contribute using an approach called Common Ground Activism.

Games selected for Unity for Humanity grants should be intended to create some type of impact on the player, and by extension a positive change in that player or the greater environment. We recommend that, if possible, your project aligns with one or more of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that can be found here. 

Once you have articulated one or more impact goals, you’ll need a process of refinement to get to what this goal means in your game development practice. Like with traditional game development, you’ll need to constantly ask if the game is engaging, fun, or interesting. But as a game for impact, you’ll also need to layer on impact thinking.

In other words, now you have to define what the impact you want actually is. 

We recommend you do this as early in your development process as you can. Having a clear, focused sense of the impact goal will be an invaluable tool in guiding your game design and development decisions going forward.

Games are built upon action. In fact, this is what makes games so different from other media: games always involve the actions of a player in order to exist.

In order for your impact goal to work its magic in the context of a game, it should be described in terms of action. 

The following are some examples of subject areas matched with an action goal. 

You can see that articulating action goals almost inevitably kicks off your process of game design. The subject area in the leftmost column is vital for generating and communicating the focus of the project. The action goal ensures that the project’s target has a good start toward being expressed via game mechanics. So far so good!

Where a Unity for Humanity project can really shine is when these actions are taken to the next level, which is defining an impact goal: the actual change you’re hoping to generate. For example:

The stepwise process above might be helpful to you to generate an impact goal and ensure that the player’s actions will be relevant to that goal. Now we’ll give you a few tactics on how to make those jumps.

Ways of describing impact goals

• A “before and after” statement: Game designers frequently find themselves imagining what a player might say to themselves as they play the game. This method is an extension of that concept:
  
  Imagine that your player is playing your game or has just finished it. This might be something like, “Before playing, I thought electric cars were more efficient but wasn’t aware of why. After playing, I see the inherent inefficiency in having a separate combustion engine in every vehicle.”
  
• Defining misconceptions: If your game’s intended change rests wholly or in part in the correction of commonly-held misconceptions, defining these misconceptions can help to guide a theory of change; that is, you intend that the player will no longer hold these misconceptions after the play experience.
  
  A common misconception is that plastic is widely recyclable. However, only a narrow set of plastic consumer products is actually recycled in the current economy; the rest goes to landfills (for example, black-colored plastic is almost never recycled). After playing the game, the player will no longer carry the misconception that consumer plastics are readily recycled.
  
• Working toward outcomes: If the game is designed with a known objective in mind, using that outcome as a guide for the game’s design can function as a theory of change.
  
  In the game Re-Mission, the goal is to motivate young cancer patients to more consistently adhere to their therapy regimen. (Ultimately Re-Mission was a success, confirmed by a randomized clinical trial*.) 

* Kato PM, Cole SW, Bradlyn AS, Pollock BH. A video game improves behavioral outcomes in adolescents and young adults with cancer: a randomized trial. Pediatrics 2008;122(2)

As you consider your impact goals, and really throughout especially the early part of development, it’s wise to frequently ask yourself whether you understand the topic as thoroughly as you need to. If it’s a personal issue or in your own area of expertise, likely you do. However, outside research may be important to ensure you are not creating new misconceptions and are communicating a good understanding of the topic.

Many games for impact projects involve outside experts (often referred to as subject matter experts) to fill in the gaps and make the game more accurate and complete. Consider reaching out to subject matter experts - many might be excited to contribute to a game project!