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Presentation of IncLudo Program at Games for Change Festival 2017 in New York

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CRI and ZMQ presented its IncLudo project at G4C Conference in New York. The G4C Festival was held at 63 5th Avenue, New York, USA. The festival showcased the best and brightest games and their game developers and creators; and leading change-makers and social entrepreneurs with keynote, sessions, panels, demos, networking events and expos. It was a 3-day event, from 31st July 2017 up to 2nd August 2017, with the first 2 days dedicated to powerful social games and their demos; and the 3rd day was assigned for VR for change summit which explored the positive power of virtual realities in the areas of science, social justice and storytelling.

One of the features of this G4C Festival 2017 was ‘Civics and Social Impact’ category which highlighted games that helped player users to engage with matters related to contemporary critical social issues such as healthcare, education, climate change, environment, diversity & inclusiveness, social justice and responsible citizenship.

The IncLudo project got the opportunity to present itself in the ‘Civics and Social Impact’ category, which was represented by its Indian co-partner ZMQ, by Hilmi Quraishi (Ashok Fellow) and Director Social Programs of ZMQ. IncLudo is a collaborative project of ZMQ and CRI with an objective to promote value of diversity and foster inclusivity at workplace. The project aims to build capacities of organizations on diversity and inclusiveness through a gaming platform. The project is supported by European Commission.

The keynote of G4C Festival 2017 was presented by Micahel Gallagher of ESA, Constance Steinkuehler of University of California, Irvine and Mora Cerf of Kellogg School of Management. On Day 1 of the festival, under the Civic and Social Impact category, IncLudo project was given a 5 minute opportunity to present its project, objective and its content under Micortalk Salon.

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There were around 10 presenters in civic section. The presentation was excellent. There were a few questions, rather, comments from the audience that they were witnessing the project of gamification for ‘diversity and inclusivity for the first time ever’. A few people also appreciated that such a concept can be used in the Corporates in the developed world. They meant that if such a concept based product can be replicated to the context for US and applied in large multinational corporations in USA.

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On the Day 1, ZMQ also participated in two civic sessions namely – iCivics: From Concept to Scale; and How gaming can bring education to conflict zones. In both the sessions, ZMQ made interventions and talked about the IncLudo project and how it is helping to build a holistic environment of on diversity and inclusivity. ZMQ got the chance to invite the audience form the 3 sessions to Showcase of the IncLudo game due on the day 2.

On Day 2, ZMQ represented in 2 more sessions ‘You have Got a Great Game’ and ‘Games of a Budget: Change for Change’. ZMQ made the interventions, shared its experience on IncLudo, and invited audience to attend the demo showcase of the Micro talk session. On Day 2, the showcase of Micro-talk session was held for 1 hour and 30 minutes during the lunch hours. Around 8 innovators presented in the session and showcased their live games. There were around 60-70 audience who had come up to the session. ZMQ has showcased through its posters, brochures and bookmarks. Besides this, ZMQ showcased the game ‘Pirate Partage’.

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There we about 20-25 visitors who had shown interest in the game. ZMQ played the game with a few of them. The time span to play the game Pirate Partage with 4 players is minimum 40 minutes. As the time period to demo showcase was limited very short and the attention span of the visitors was less, they didn’t play the game till the end. But we made them play in groups of 2-3 people. They played 1 round of game each to understand the concept being physically challenged in different respects and how to communicate with each other. Almost all of the people who visited the stand were highly impressed by the game concept. Some of the people who visited the stand were:

  1. Leena Kejriwal

  2. Sarah Photowat

  3. Aidan and Daniel

  4. Felipe Marlon

  5. Fredric Bernal Lim (Special Education Teacher)

  6. Stefan Krause

  7. Asi Burak

  8. Emily Treat

  9. Simone Stein

  10. Minseok Do

  11. Ram Devineni

  12. Ellen Mendlow

  13. Greg Trefry

  14. Mark Deloura

     

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