The United Nations Is Hosting Its First-Ever Games Event With Games For Change

For the first time, the United Nations will be holding a video games event, as part of the 20th anniversary celebration for the Games for Change Festival.

Being held at the United Nations headquarters in New York, the event is running July 17-21, and is the first-ever summit of its kind to be held at the UN. The festival is held annually, hosted by the non-profit Games For Change, which aims to make the world better through games. This is the first time the games industry has been involved with anything at the UN, with the Games and Sustainable Development Goals Summit making an appearance for the first time at the conference.

“This is our 20th anniversary for Games for Change. And to celebrate, we have expanded our programming to touch on different ways to connect with and celebrate the different audiences that we serve,” president of Games for Change Susanna Pollack told GamesBeat in an interview.

The entire festival will feature a week’s worth of events, hosted alongside the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme. Games for Change is also hosting the Games for Change Next Gen Fest, a festival specifically aimed at students aged 13-18, to help connect them to industry professionals, as well as provide them the opportunity to learn design and coding skills, and take part in workshops.

Games for Change itself runs a number of initiatives and projects, like XR for Change, which encourages immersive media to “address real-world challenges, create empathy, and drive social change,” and to “foster collaboration between content creators, industry, and cause-based organizations, advance equity and inclusion, and inspire creative use of emerging technologies for social impact.”