Serious Games

Games for Change

Elizabeth Newbury is the Director and Program Associate for the Serious Games Initiative (SGI) for the Wilson Center, leading Wilson's use of games in engaging the public around policy research. As lead of the Serious Games Initiative, she leverages games as a tool for the public communication of science and policy research. Current projects include the Fiscal Ship, a game about the federal budget developed and maintained in collaboration with the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy with the Brookings Institution.

Jukka Niva

Games Round Up: Conservation & Community

The proper use of science is not to conquer nature but to live in it. -- Barry Commoner

Games Round Up: Women of STEM

Screenshot from Portal 2 (c) Valve Corporation

Cutting through the Noise: Engaging the Public in Arctic Science

To have an informed public eager to engage in discourse around Arctic science, it is vital to not only make scientific findings widely available, but relevant. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Science and Technology Innovation Program, Serious Games Initiative, and Polar Initiative are proud to partner to host a panel on the public communication of environmental sciences in Alaska.

Directions:

Directions to the Wilson Center

Stephanie Pfirman

Federal Games Guild

The Federal Games Guild (FGG) is an informal community of practice of federal agencies who are interested in the correlation of games for federal initiatives. As a platform, the FGG connects federal entities and staff interested in the application of games in the federal space. Member organizations range in their relationship to using games, from those who support game development through funding, to those active in using innovative technologies in their practice, to those who design and research games as part of their agency’s outreach efforts around public education.

Games Round Up: Black History

“To know how much there is to know, is the beginning to learning to live.” -- Dorothy West, 1995 The Richer, The Poorer

Evaniya Shakya

From Bytes to Bucks: Soft Power, Policy, Tech, and Culture

Three Wilson Center analysts examine the push and pull between state and society in the expression of cultural values in contemporary technologies, and what this tension implies for the international system:

1. Valerie Anishchenkova: The importance of video games in modern global culture cannot be underestimated, especially in their increasing impact on personal and collective identities. What do Russian war-themed video games reveal about contemporary Russian nationalism? Who are friends and who are foes? Drawn directly from today’s geopolitical conflicts.