Into the Digital Future: Gaming for Good with Susanna Pollock

In this episode of ‘Into the Digital Future,’ hosts Jordan Shapiro and Laura Higgins discuss the transformative power of gaming with Susanna Pollock, president of Games for Change. Pollock explains how games are being used beyond entertainment to address critical societal issues such as mental health and climate anxiety. The conversation highlights various initiatives, including partnerships with UNESCO, the World Food Programme, and the Deepak Chopra Foundation. The episode also delves into the Games for Change Student Challenge, empowering young people to design games with social impact themes. Join the discussion to learn how gaming is evolving as a tool for positive change.

This transcript of the Into the Digital Future podcast has been edited for clarity. Please listen to the full episode here, and learn more about the season. 

 

Susanna Pollack: I’m Susanna Pollock. I’m President of Games for Change. I’ve been part of this organization for ten years leading our work as a global advocate for the use of games as drivers for social good. But prior to working in the games industry, I had a long career in television working for the BBC where I was really inspired by the development of interactive entertainment towards the end of my career there. That led me into this world of games. I’m a firm believer that games are the storytelling platform for the 21st century and have been able to refocus my work in Building communities, getting projects off the ground and ensuring that content and stories and media can be used for social good.

Jordan Shapiro: Is that how you got to Games for Change? Was it this interest in the idea that they were a new form of storytelling? 

Susanna Pollack: Absolutely. So the BBC, as a public service network did a lot of R&D. They did a lot of really interesting experiments and telling stories on the web. And this is 20 years ago. Early, early 2010s and I just, I fell in love with it. I was working very hard at the time to get these new projects funded narrative branch narrative, on the internet, but it was all through the internet and game shows, like building robots and all this crazy stuff. And I was like, wow, this is awesome. And that’s what took me on this journey.

Jordan Shapiro: So tell us about Games for Change, and tell us about what it is, what it does, what it means all the things that people may not realize.

Susanna Pollack: So Games for Change is a not-for-profit— it’s a global organization now with chapters all over the world. And we have a firm mission and belief that games can have a power beyond entertainment. That games can be created to deliver outcomes that are positive impacts on society, whether they are games that are used in the classroom for education, games that are used to build awareness around critical issues, and more and more research are demonstrating that games can actually be good for our mental health.

Being and we as a convener have brought together different stakeholders to explore the potential of games. And that’s really what we did for the first 10 years of the organization. We’re 20 years old now and have grown alongside. The games industry talking about this, bringing new people into the conversation, whether they’re researchers or from academia, people from the social sectors from NGOs and foundations, government agencies, and really built this cross-sector.

Partnerships and collaboration. And then in the last decade, we’ve expanded our work to work with a lot of young people to work internationally with different types of organizations. And now we have reached into some of the most developing markets and countries helping others learn how to make games applying these skills for social benefit and social good and continue to bring in other industries and sectors, into the space so we can have as much impact as possible as an industry.

Jordan Shapiro: What have you learned about what it takes to raise good gamers? We hear so much about the “bad” gamers and cyberbullying. So what do we need to know? What do parents, educators, and caregivers need to know about raising good gamers? 

Susanna Pollack: Raising good gamers is a passion of ours. We have an initiative that we started a number of years ago with Katie Salen at University of California Irvine in their Connected Learning Lab. And now we’re working with Take This on the initiative. Laura, you are a meaningful advisor of our committee. And as part of that initiative the focus is less about creating new content or new games for impact, but recognizing that the players and people who play games have created a relationship and with games that have become a really meaningful part of their lives, and especially the youngest of gamers find themselves or can find themselves in situations that may not feel safe or they’re unsure of how to interact. There’s you know, there’s been conversations about toxicity and bullying in games, and our approach to addressing this, particularly with this younger population, is to invert it, and help equip young people with the skill sets so that they can so they can model good behavior in those environments that we hope will help raise a generation of people who are good gamers as they grow up in this ecosystem.

And so we have a number of great initiatives that have spanned from partnerships with the Cartoon Network that created resources and public service announcements for young people and their parents to help them converse together. Conversation and dialogue is a really big part of this when I think it comes to ensuring that children and kids and teens are equipped with managing those potential situations. But parents are aware of what’s going on and parents can help them in their journey. 

Laura Higgins: I love that, Susanna. Media literacy, civility, digital citizenship, these things are all totally my jam. This is my absolute passion in life. Helping young people and families just have that resilience to spot the signs, to know how to act and feel confident.

But one thing that we’ve really seen, and I know that, Raising Good Gamers and Games for Change as a whole is really involved in, which I’m so proud of. We roadblocks are also doing, but it’s really this youth participation. It’s not just about us telling or even, giving the advice, but it’s actually about getting young people involved in the process.

And whether it’s, co creation, as you said, just engaging youth in being that positive force for good. I know that you’ve been doing a lot of work around this. Could you tell us a bit about that, please? 

Susanna Pollack: In our mission to empower, we also think about young people and the next generation of game designers, and there are terrific advantages and benefits learning opportunities for kids as they learn the process of game design that benefits them as learners throughout their entire lives, not just about setting them on the path to become game designers, but all of that package is something that we wrapped up in a program we call the Games for Change Student Challenge, and this gives kids as young as 10 to 18 the ability to learn the game design process start applying that onto different platforms and tools that they’re ready to use rather it’s making games in Scratch or in Unity at the other end of the spectrum and anything in between. Kids are making games in Roblox and in Minecraft and using other tools. And we give them the ability to create games, but we ask them to create games about social issues.

So we connect this idea of civic engagement with creation. And this program is running for 10 years now. We’ve reached over 50,000 students in the U.S. We engage teachers to bring these classes in this curriculum into their classrooms, whether they are computer science teachers or English teachers or social studies teachers.

They all see the process of making games as a form of self-expression, of storytelling, and it’s a way in which youth can combine their passion, which is gaming, you know to something that they can bring themselves into. And so this program, which is now reaching international audiences, which is amazing.

It ends with a competition every year where students can submit their games about different social impact themes and and receive, recognition for their incredible work. And we’re receiving over 1000 games a year working with incredible partners. 

Jordan Shapiro: You’ve got to tell us about some of the really cool ones. Can you give us two of your favorite examples? 

Susanna Pollack: I’ll give you some, I’ll give you some things that I’m really excited about this year, because we have some great partners. We work with NGOs and other issue-oriented organizations to come up with these theme topics.

And something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while, we are doing this year–it combines mental health concerns along with climate, and it brings into point a way for young people to explore what they may be feeling, but don’t have a word for. And what I’ve come to learn is eco-anxiety, which is defined as the fear of environmental doom, with all this messaging around the realities of what is happening with our climate and the risks that exist around us and young people in particular, are feeling this the crisis on their mental health and their concerns about the future, of the planet. One of the ways, similar to what we’re doing with Raising Good Gamers, to address this is by empowering young people to do something, and one of the ways they can do something to take care of their mental health is by connecting to nature.

And there’s research and whole pedagogy about how connecting to nature can elevate your state of mind and by creating an emotional bond and a love for nature, showing compassion and care for nature. Creating, like having even sensory, contact with the natural world helps, helps with managing this kind of stress. And so working with an organization called Earthwatch Europe, we are offering students and teachers resources to learn about how they can take care of themselves by connecting to nature. We are calling that particular challenge, Nurture Yourself Through Nature. Which kind of has a nice little thing to it and what we’re gonna be seeing over the next nine months, really, are ways in which Young people are learning about this issue, learning how they can take care of themselves and eventually expressing that through a game that they’re going to design. I just love that. 

Laura Higgins: Yeah, I absolutely love that, Susannah. Even when we’re treating just low-level anxiety, the five things, one of them is go outside, take some breaths, smell, hear the sounds. Literally touch the grass. So for us to be able to link that real-world feeling, but also in online and gaming environments, I think it’s beautiful.

Jordan Shapiro: I have a different appreciation. I appreciate that too. But what I like about it is there are so many reasons right now in the world for young people, teenagers, adolescents, to be feeling real anxiety, and real fear, and real worry about the state of the world. Climate change, of course, being one of those primary things. And I love that. What we hear on the news— it’s because of the phones, and the games, and the screens. That’s why they have the anxiety! So I love this. There are real things to have anxiety about, and there are these incredible tools that our kids don’t know how to use, in the best possible ways, in order to mediate their emotional states and this is helping them. And I love that…So tell us about some of the other initiatives that are helping with with teen mental health. 

Susanna Pollack: Yeah. So some of the other themes, have to do with just that, about managing and understanding environmental crises, natural disasters, and conflict, and how that can also affect how you engage with your communities.

And another thing that we’re working on with the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative, and that was founded by Forrest Whitaker, the actor. He’s an amazing actor and obviously a very deep and well-meaning individual and he’s created this initiative. It’s called Peaceformers and that theme addresses the idea or explores the idea that having a peaceful society can be challenging when things that are happening around your world seem to be in conflict or out of your control, like natural disasters or political conflicts, and how one can create a peaceful environment.

By managing your reaction to those situations and many times helping address and contributing to fixing those situations and how those are inextricably linked. And to me that was just a really interesting connection, and one that opens allows teens and young people to explore a lot of different things, but at the same time understanding that your community and your own well-being is tied to peaceful interactions.

The last one, which we’re also really excited about this year, is with a global institution that I think most people are familiar with. It’s a UN agency called the World Food Program that is one of the biggest humanitarian UN agencies that deal with disaster relief by getting food to the most and aid to the most underserved areas and people in need. And they have a an education mission right now to work with young people to help them understand the challenges that people have around food scarcity and hunger.

And as part of our partnership with them they have helped us design this challenge for kids to think about those issues, breaking it down to things that, that we hope are relatable, because sometimes these, big global issues can be paralyzing, right? And feel so, out of their control, but we have adapted this particular theme to be thinking about personal nutrition about communities that maybe have are facing school facing food scarcity and how they can contribute to help solving these problems through things that they are experiencing at school, whether it’s cafeteria lunch or food banks locally. And it’s a way ito get young people to start caring about those in their communities that may not be as fortunate as them. 

Jordan Shapiro: And so what does it look like?

Susanna Pollack: Okay, so kids, so whether they’re kids invited into the program through a teacher, and we have teachers all over the country saying, this is a great unit for us to do in the classroom, right, or they want to explore this themselves. We have one, we have curriculum for kids to learn about game design. What is a game? What are the parts of a game? Things that have nothing to do with digital media whatsoever. But then we have toolkits on how to build a game in Scratch or in Minecraft or Roblox.

And then they can make a game themselves or with friends. Kids can partner up to four people and that’s what’s so great too about the collaborative nature of game-making. You don’t have to be someone who loves coding. You can be an artist or a storyteller, a musician, and collaborate together and creating a game that could be a narrative game where you literally are telling a story, or it could be a puzzle game, or it could be, a game that Is quiz like, there’s so many different formats to what the game could be and they learn about these different formats throughout this program.

And then they also have access to hear from professionals in the field. So we have a series called the Level Up series, which is virtual and free, where kids are learning from or hear from character art designers, or they’re learning from people who are experts in building in Minecraft or in Roblox, and they’re also learning and they have opportunities to hear about these issues from someone from the World Food Program or somebody from the Whittaker Peace and Development Initiative.

And then at the end of the program, they submit their game and we have professionals and subject matter experts reviewing it. Those games, we have over 300 people looking at these games. They are so fabulous. The games can be anything from the first level or a working prototype. We know the kids are just learning this and it’s less about the final output, it’s about how much the participants are embracing the themes, are able to tell, to share the messages that they want to share. Yes, and how fun the game is, right? And is it fun to play? And we have our prizes and our categories just separates middle school students. We have a junior version and a senior version, and you can get prizes for games for each of the themes, and we have a grand prize winner, Take Two Interactive, which is the parent company of Rockstar Games. They make NBA 2K25 and do great stuff, give scholarships to winners. You can win up to a $10,000 scholarship. It’s really amazing. 

Laura Higgins: It is great. Susanna, you and I were chatting recently, and, we work on several projects together, which is always a joy but we had this great conversation about a VR experience that you’d come across or have been involved in that was really all still on this theme of like mental health and the image and all of that stuff.

Can you tell us a little bit about that, please? 

Susanna Pollack: Sure. First, I’ll say that about seven, eight years ago, when virtual reality I’ll say mania started happening when, Oculus came out with their virtual reality headset, the VR headset and HTC and these other hardware manufacturers started developing these experiences.

We thought we saw for Games for Change an opportunity to help build a community of practice around virtual reality games and just experiences in general. So that we don’t just see first-person shooter games in this medium. And so we’ve been helping a number of creators. And then I’m going to programs so that these experiences can get out into the world for people that they can help.

It’s a lot different with games, right? Games. The hardware is distributed. Everyone has a phone with virtual reality. It’s it’s more challenging to get out. to get this into the hands of people, particularly if it’s an impact experience that you want to serve. So there, there was a series it started with one project, but now there are a series of virtual reality experiences that we’ve gotten involved in by a production company in the UK called Anagram.

And it uses virtual reality as a as a way in which to help reduce stigma around mental health and other brain health. Sentiments, right? And issues. And one of the really interesting thing about I think about virtual reality is the ability to help to allow one to experience what they said they lived experience of someone else because it’s a completely immersive experience.

And the different afforded affordances of the actual the technology. You could actually see the world through somebody else’s eyes. You can experience Symptoms and sounds and distorted visuals. And so they’ve created this, just two beautiful pieces. First one is called Goliath that centers around psychosis and a young man with schizophrenia.

And what’s so interesting about that piece is and experiencing it is. that they’ve designed it in a way that, you have, you can experience these symptoms, whether auditory or hallucinatory moments, but you also are able to go through an emotional journey through this young man.

And the connection really for us was that this young man who when Unfortunately, went in and out of mental institutions and health institutions through most part of his young life as he tried to balance with medication and other inputs to help him engage in and be able to live in in society.

And it wasn’t until he was able to engage. In online gaming and develop a a persona through gaming avatar that he found himself able to engage with others. Of course there was treatment involved and I don’t mean to negate all of that, but I’m saying, but he was able to. To develop new relationships through gaming and his profile was called is called Goliath.

And he became, and is well known as a gamer. And as you go through this experience, this virtual reality experience, they haven’t they’ve embedded a lot of gaming elements into it because it’s part of his story. And And it’s just really beautiful, beautifully made. So the piece went on to win awards at like festivals, the Venice film festival sun South by Southwest.

But what we want and is available on the meta, quest door, but what we want to do with it is and have started to develop partnerships is to use this virtual reality experience as a way to start conversations, help reduce stigma for others who are caregivers, who are friends who are loved ones of people with psychosis.

Yes. So that they can better understand what’s they’re going through. So we’ve developed material that can be used to help people understand what the experience is that they’re going to be having, and then facilitation and discussion guides about what they, about how they can talk about this now that they’ve had this experience.

And we’re, we are going to be bringing this to college campuses. There’s a version that will likely go to high schools as well. And then also in nursing schools and in veterans hospitals. And that’s just, which is really amazing about this this medium. And the next project that was just released is about ADHD called Impulse, and it tells a story of four different individuals who grew up with ADHD.

And again, the idea and the,

Laura Higgins: I’m just going to, I know we need to move on. That’s inspirational to hear and I’m seeing and hearing more use of, both virtual reality, but generally games, to help both empower for people to tell their story, but also that therapeutic piece. I believe I just met a wonderful woman called Sarah, who created a VR experience called Soul Paint.

I believe she won the Games for Change award this year, as well as the SXSW Award. But again, this is a very kind of really visceral experience where people learn how your emotions and feelings are actually physically things that you feel, whether it’s butterflies, whether it’s, the tingles that you get, or you’re getting goosebumps on your arms, and just having a possibility to literally paint the feelings that you’re having is, you can just see so many amazing opportunities.

So thank you for leaning into it. I’m really excited to see more of this stuff coming. I’m going to pass over to you, Jordan. 

Jordan Shapiro: Yeah, it’s very exciting. I can’t wait to see some of these examples that you just shared with us. But but we have to wind down cause we’re getting to the end of our time.

So I want to ask you a more general question. I already hinted at it. Like there, there’s so much in the media now about, about teens and mental health and blaming it on, on, on digital media. That’s not new. It’s this is a new manifestation of it currently, but it’s been going that technophobia has been there for at least as long as I’ve been in this field.

And certainly long before that, but I’m just curious, like this what do you think is that is the state of young people and media right now? Like, how do you, how do you think about it? This is your what, like, how do you feel? What’s the sense of.

Should we have this sort of kids these days, generational angst oh, this new generation should, shouldn’t we, where should we, where shouldn’t we? I don’t know. I’m sure you think about this all the time. So what are your general thoughts? 

Susanna Pollack: I will say as a blanket statement, I don’t think we give young people enough credit.

I don’t think we give them enough credit that they can learn and use the medium, the technology responsibly. I don’t think they I don’t necessarily know out of the gate what that means. But I think when it comes to, this argument about banning cell phones in schools right cell phones is a piece of technology, there’s content that comes through it.

Which can either be, inappropriate for a student can lead to distractions in schools. All of that is, is exists. It’s there. But I feel that the conversation is, um and many people are saying, the answer is to, ban cell phones from schools outright.

And I think we miss an opportunity there. And this same thing goes about games, right? About saying that games, are also a distraction and, lead to addiction. I think that we miss an opportunity to teach kids how to manage and use technology responsibly. Cell phones.

What is it? The Pew Research Center said that 95 percent of teens have access to a smartphone. It’s an integral part of their lives, right? So rather than avoiding the issue, I think and teach responsible phone usage like limiting screen time and and how to use apps or games for productivity.

But to participate in helping young people develop ballot, a balanced tech use right that helps with their mental health and the well being. So that’s number one and also acknowledging that these tools, smartphones or and games, they could be a powerful tool for learning.

And there’s great content out there and that great content can, wouldn’t be available if we just like, as I said, blanket Say you can’t use it. So there’s also the appreciation and recognizing that there’s positive things that are happening within these mediums. And again, bringing those attention to young people rather than assuming and basically distrusting kids that they don’t know how to self regulate.

And if and that has other consequences about, other developmental skills that we don’t Allow for Children, to develop if we are just removing what is the perceived issue in front of them.

Laura Higgins: I couldn’t put that better myself. Thank you so much. Susanna. Is there anything else that you wanted to raise? Anything that we may be haven’t touched on that you wanted to share with our listeners? 

Susanna Pollack: There is one initiative that we’re involved in that I think is worth mentioning in this, on this podcast, so thank you for that.

We’ve recently started a partnership with the Deepak Chopra Foundation and it’s around mental health. Another way in which we can contribute to addressing what is now and what Chopra Foundation has deemed like a global silent mental health crisis. And they have acknowledged that games could be a very important tool to help address this addressing this globally.

And we’re one small spoke on a wheel of different activations that are going to be taking place over the course of the next couple of years. But we are now leading a games and immersive working group that is working together to help identify different activations that we can do that leverages both the reach the games have to the 3 billion, players around the planet, the type of interactive experiences kids are and people are having within those games and how we can, it’s a way for us to better educate and inform the public parents, kids about about the relationship of mental health and being, through this technology. And so it’s a very exciting initiative. We’re just starting to work on mental health month is in the U. S is in May, and I think we’ll see a lot of activity.

Developing towards then, but games are a great tool. This is another example of how great games can be a great tool beyond entertainment. And it’s exciting to have, leading organizations like the Chopra Foundation say that this, understand that this medium is a great opportunity in which to help people live better lives.