Half the Sky on PBS
[Source: Games for Change, October 1, 2012]
Games for Change is pleased to take part in a landmark transmedia event which features a four-hour PBS primetime national and international broadcast, a Facebook-hosted adventure game, three mobile games, two websites, educational videos with teacher guides, a social media campaign supporting over 30 partner NGOs, a campus ambassador program and an impact assessment plan. All of this content is in service to Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, the widely acclaimed book by Pultizer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. The film, games, videos and movement focus on finding meaningful solutions to what Kristof and WuDunn call "the moral challenge of our time" - the plight facing women and girls across the globe. Many of Media Impact Funders' members have supported this project, including the Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, ITVS and Corporation for Public Broadcasting, among others.
View the transmedia trailer now and join the discussion on Twitter with #HalftheSky.
To learn more about the movement, click here.
Upcoming Games from Half the Sky
Half the Sky Movement: The Game on Facebook
Combining an expertly-designed experience from the award-winning Canadian team at Frima Studio and talent support from the social gaming leader, Zynga (read about their involvement on Games for Change's blog), Half the Sky Movement: The Game will build upon the fine-tuned gameplay elements popular in today's Facebook games. This adventure game begins in India, then moves onto Kenya, Vietnam, Afghanistan and then the U.S. Along the way you will meet women and girls facing a range of issues, including sex trafficking, gender-based violence, barriers to education as well as challenges to female economic empowerment. In-game actions and quests will unlock real-world support for NGO partners in the game, including The Fistula Foundation, GEMS, Girl Up, Heifer International, ONE, Room to Read, Tostan and World Vision.
To learn more about the Facebook game, watch a preview now.
In a talk at the Social Good Summit last week, Games for Change Co-President Asi Burak and Nicholas Kristof announced that the Pearson Foundation and Johnson & Johnson are each providing $250,000 toward translating game play directly into real-world action respectively for Room to Read and The Fistula Foundation.
With 100% of the $500,000 being unlocked by players going directly to these two organizations, Half the Sky Movement: The Game will effect real change at launch. Read more about it on our blog.
The game's landing page is live now, so feel free to like it on Facebook.
Half the Sky Movement Mobile Games
The three mobile games were developed by UK game company Mudlark and focus on issues related to education and maternal health. These games are for feature phones in India and Kenya and will be released later in the fall. This summer, with the support of CBA WorldView, filmmaker Edward Owles accompanied Games for Change Co-President Michelle Byrd and game designer Matthew Watkins in order to capture the reception of the games with their intended audiences as they visited community centers, schools and medical clinics in Nairobi, Kenya. You can see a preview of Owles' forthcoming short film here.
Kenya's NTV also ran a news segment on the launch.
To learn more about the mobile games, click here.
Thanks to the Game Funders
All games have been executive produced by Games for Change and Maro Chermayeff of Show of Force (producers of the PBS broadcast). The Facebook game is supported in large part by the Ford Foundation, with additional support provided by the Rockefeller Foundation, Intel, United Nations Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts. The mobile games were fully funded by USAID, under the FHI 360-managed C-Change Project, with distribution by E-Line Media.
