The 15th annual Life.Love. Game Design Challenge has launched and this year's theme is resilience.

Since 2008 the nonprofit program Gaming Against Violence has been producing, publishing, and researching prosocial games intended for adolescents. The intentionally designed games have covered topics like bystander awareness, consent, culture, gaslighting, healthy relationships, media literacy, power and control dynamics, and teen dating violence prevention. For the 2022 game design contest the topic is resilience.

The contest website explains: "The past few years have been especially stressful for everybody - especially students - and we believe that intentionally designed video games could help all young people be better equipped to respond to trauma and stress. We want these resilience games to be used by educators in classrooms and also by parents at home."

Winning games will share a pot of $5,000 and the contest is divided into two rounds. For Round One, registrants will submit their "game pitch" by answering a series of questions about the idea for their resilience video game. These game pitches are due by July 5th.

As has been the case with every game design contest they've run since 2008 there is one important rule: no violence in the game.

For Round Two, 10 finalists will be selected from the Round One proposed game pitch submissions. As the contest website states: "You do not need to be a game developer or game designer in order to become a Finalist - you just need to have a clever idea that you believe would translate well into a compelling game about resilience!"

"We want these resilience games to be used by educators in classrooms and also by parents at home."

The finalists will then have until August 7th to submit their completed resilience video game based on their game pitch. Judges will then evaluate the resilience video games to determine the winning game. The judges will be a mix of experts in the field of game design, game development, or games research as well as experts on the topics of resilience, trauma, or violence prevention.

The winning resilience game will be announced October, 2022.

The contest website is resilient.games and, in addition to the contest rules, it contains definitions and links to resources about resilience, including the great resilience resources at PACES Connection.

About Gaming Against Violence

This Top-50 nonprofit program for 2022 has been creating and distributing prosocial, trauma-informed, video games for young people since 2008. Its goal is to: "engage, educate, and empower young people through the power of intentionally designed prosocial games."

The program and the games have been the recipient of many awards and honors including: 2022 Games for Change Awards finalist for "Best Learning Game," two finalists for the 2021 GEE Learning Games Awards, and 2019 Games for Change Awards finalist for "Most Significant Impact."

The winning games have come from many countries, reflecting a wide variety of life experiences including: Argentina, Belgium, France, India, Portugal, Thailand, and Vanuatu.

You can read more about the program and will also find links to peer-reviewed published journal articles showing the effectiveness of their prosocial video games at the Gaming Against Violence website.