SGS Feature: 'Funding Perspectives: New Initiatives'

Today's main feature written for Gamasutra sister site Serious Games Source, which deals with games created for training, health, government, military, educational and other uses, continues Gamasutra's coverage of the recent 2006 Games For Change Conference with a breakdown of a panel concerning how to interact with funding organizations. In this extract, which was taken from a presentation titled “Funding Perspectives: New Initiatives” that featured viewpoints of funding organizations and advice on how to interact with them, writer Sande Chen discusses what is most important to foundations when they are first approached regarding funding a serious game: “Know your audience. Speak the language of your audience,” cautioned Onyekere, when asked how to interest board members in a project. She noted that it might take a while for the board of a traditional foundation to get the connection between learning and games. They may need to be introduced slowly to the idea. Likewise, Yowell, Education Program Office at the MacArthur Foundation, found that video games may be a hard sell to board members over the age of 50.” Chen added later: “Assessment and quantitative measurements are very important to foundations. They need to see that the games are making a difference. HopeLab, with its cancer game Re-Mission, was cited as a company of enormous help to other companies because it had done evaluation of its game’s results. Because there was such powerful evidence of helpful games, Madison, of the non-profit organization ITAC, said that the state and federal government would be interested in games, even though the government might not call it “game development” but a “new kind of model to teach.”” You can now read the full Serious Games Source feature on the subject, including more insight from the panel (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from external websites).