A Game to Save the World

"A Game to Save the World" - Game Jam

"A Game to Save the World" is an online hack competition hosted by TAIKAI, where programmers, game designers, artists, writers, and others in game development-related fields will compete to create a digital or an analogue game that educates people around the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The game can be a videogame or a non-digital game like a board game or card game.

A Game Jam is comparable to hackathons, but for games. In a time-boxed period of time, you are encouraged to create a digital or analogue game from scratch, including design, artwork, building and testing.

"Game Jams" revolve around inspiring one another, going crazy with experimental ideas and celebrating how wonderful game development is.

To connect participants in this global effort, we encourage people from all over the world to team up with fellow technologists or designers for a global, learning, building, and friendly competition that could produce amazing game experiences and influence people to have a fair relationship with the world and society and decelerate climate changes that might the world as it is for our future generations.

This remarkable initiative serves as a kick-off for the Game Jam stream of online challenges promoted by TAIKAI with some relevant partners in the Game Industry.

Each competition will have a special theme to be addressed and will run entirely online, so anyone in the world could make part of this, get Social Recognition and promote himself with his achievements on each competition.

We encourage game enthusiasts, professionals and geeks to use these competitions as a playground to learn new skills, test ideas or approaches, support your team with constructive feedback or just give them moral support.

You can even work on a non-digital game, and then there's no need for any developer experience.

1. Theme

Sustainability: is the game jam theme used as inspiration by all the competition participants to design the game mechanics and rules that might be incorporated in the games. The game mechanics should always reward green behaviours and actions that follow the sustainability goals defined the UN’s Sustainability Development Goals.

The Sustainable Development Goals are:

1. No Poverty - Donate what you don’t use. More than 700 million people still live in extreme poverty
2. Zero Hunger - Waste less food and support local farmers. A third of the world’s food is wasted, yet 821 million people are undernourished
3. Good Health and Well-Being - Vaccinate your family, vaccinations resulted in an 80% drop in measles deaths between 2000 and 2017
4. Quality Education - Help educate the children in your community — 617 million children and adolescents lack minimum proficiency in reading and mathematics
5. Gender Equality - Empower women and girls and ensure their equal rights — 1 in 3 women has experienced physical and/or sexual violence
6. Clean Water and Sanitation - Avoid wasting water — Water scarcity affects more than 40% of the world’s population
7. Affordable and Clean Energy - Use only energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs — Three billion people still lack clean cooking fuels and technologies
8. Decent Work and Economic Growth - Create job opportunities for youth. One-fifth of young people are not in education, employment or training
9. Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure Fund projects that provide basic infrastructure — Roads, water, sanitation and electricity remain scarce in many developing countries.
10. Reduced Inequalities - Support the marginalized and disadvantaged — The poorest 40% of the population earn less than 25% of global income
11. Sustainable Cities and Communities - Bike, walk or use public transportation — 9 out of 10 urban residents breathe polluted air
12. Responsible Consumption and Production - Recycle paper, plastic, glass and aluminium. By 2050, the equivalent of almost three planets could be required to sustain current lifestyles
13. Climate Action - Act now to stop global warmings. Global emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) have increased by almost 50% since 1990
14. Life Below Water- Avoid plastic bags to keep the oceans clean. Over three billion people depend on marine and coastal biodiversity for their livelihoods
15. Life On Land - Plant a tree and help protect the environment. Forest are home to more than 80% of all terrestrial species of animals, plants and insects
16. Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions - Stand up for human rights. In 2018, the number of people fleeing war, persecution and conflict exceeded 70 million
17. Partnerships - Lobby your government to boost development financing. Achieving the SDGs could open up US$12 trillion of market opportunities and create 380 million new jobs by 2030

2. Game Narrative

The game narrative should always influence and incentivize people to spread awareness about their actions that have positive effects on nature, communities, wildlife or minorities.

The goal is to encourage, inspire - and be inspired by - the future generation of game makers and players. Computer games allow people from different communities to learn about the issues involved in sustainable development.

3. Deliverables:

All game resources (game, source code, designs, presentation, documentation, sketches, …) must be submitted as a "TAIKAI Project" until the submission deadline. All submissions must be in English and must be the original work of the submitter team.

A project description that may include:

• A brief explanation of what the extension does and what makes it unique.
• Game mechanics, rules and design decisions
• Sustainable Development Goals addressed
• Screenshots or pictures from the Game
• Source Code link (Digital Games)
• Technology Stack used (Digital Games)
• Game Target Profile (Age, Gender, Demography,… )

The following project attachments and resources:

• Slide Presentation about the game and/or
• Screenshots, Image, Diagrams and Videos.

4. Judging Criteria

Sustainability Learning
Is the game designed to help the player learn/act-through-play, with specific regard to the Sustainable Development Goals?

Engagement
Does the product experience encourage users to re-engage over time (repeatable), or is it just a one-time experience?

Feasibility
Can the full game be launched in the next 12-18 months?

Impact
How much it will impact the people around the project that you devised?

Originality
Did you think outside of the box? If it's been done before, what did you change? How did you improve it?

Intellectual Property Rights
All submissions remain the intellectual property of the participant or team that developed them.

5. Eligibility

TAIKAI Game Jam organisers have the right at their sole discretion to determine whether a submission is eligible for the challenge. TAIKAI may disqualify, at organisers sole discretion, TAIKAI Game Jam submissions (including, without limitation, content submitted in connection therewith) that violate third party rights or law or regulation, use inappropriate or explicit language or images or display content that TAIKAI or Sponsors otherwise finds objectionable.

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