VAF|GAME announced the results of the very first funding call for this year. There were a lot of applications and we see a lot of positive results so we can conclude the future of our Flemish game ecosystem appears bright 🤩 Read on to know who kickstarts this year with some well deserved VAF|GAME funding and discover which game nailed the very first post-release support.
Congrats to everyone who succeeded their submission and received valuable support. The calendar of all VAF|GAME submission calls in 2024 is online. Next deadline: April 30th. Keep an eye on our socials so you don’t miss out on anything.
Fight that winter depression and join the companionship of fellow gamedevs at the next FLEGA café March 7th, 4.30PM in Genk! We teamed up with the great people at Luca School of Arts to bring you local beers, sodas and great people. The café is free but you need to register!
Flanders Technology & Innovation (FTI) is a festival to celebrate technology in all its forms and applications. The festival week ends in Antwerp on March 23rd-24th with an expo for a B2C audience of over 60.000 people showcasing the wonderful companies our region has on offer. And that includes games of course! Expect a mix of immersive experiences, technological installations, workshops and a low-key conference. Read on on how you can be part of it.
A booth in the FTI gamezone includes:
1 spot of the 12 booths in the designated game area at the Antwerp Sportpaleis
booth surface of approximately 3×3 m
electricity, WIFI, lighting
basic furniture (tables, chairs)
your visual printed on a banner
screens can be ordered if needed
access passes, parking passes, food & drinks
The booths are free of charge so make up your mind quickly and let the organizers know that you want to be there. Will we see you there?
Welcome to another blog version of the Game for Thought series (GFT), this is a written recap of Howest DAE’s livestream series that tackles ethically-relevant topics in the games industry and explores the impact & implications of industry developments.
Reason enough for us, here at FLEGA, to communicate these topics and challenges as widely as possible. In this blog recap of the livestream, we’ll break down the most important talking points of the panel, but for those who prefer to watch the entire video, you can find it below.
In this Game For Thought panel, we talk all about the topic of serious games. Games are not just for “fun” but they bring culture and are an ART form. They have the power to motivate meaningful change in the most unique ways.
Elizabeth Newbury: Serious games are games that go beyond entertainment, so the title of this panel is aptly named. There are two categories for me, the first one would be games that are designed from the start to be educative. Math Blaster is an example from my childhood that helped kids with math. The second category are often commercial games that can be used in the classroom, but that weren’t designed for it. Minecraft had kids flocking to it, so teachers started looking into how they could incorporate this into their lessons. Minecraft even had an educational edition release afterward, so it became a hybrid of the two. But you also have games like EVE online that introduced quests that help with human research, even COVID research recently.
Glenn Gillis: I’d like to add that we all love games because they are voluntary in their nature. You play them because you want to play them. Information is retained better that way and it’s a good reason to consider bringing playfulness back into the learning process. This is what sits at the heart of the impact games can have, it can trigger a love of learning and cause a behaviour change.
What is the difference in the process of making a serious game?
Sabiha Ghellal: First, I’d like to share that I use a lot of publications from fellow panellist Eric Zimmerman to teach. There is a lot of info there on the study of gamedesign and playfulness. When we tackle a game in class, we always start with the deconstruction to better understand it and then we produce a game design idea. Two of my students are now working on a turn-based strategy game involving wetlands, and for this they talked to an expert to better understand the facts that need to be present in their game. They are even considering taking real weather data and incorporating it into the game. But they should always keep in mind that it needs to remain fun, as that is the very reason for a game to exist. Creating a serious game that is not fun to play makes no sense. That’s why we always end with a player-centric evaluation.
Eric Zimmerman: It’s a complicated question. My opinion overlaps a lot with what has been said before. I was trained as an artist and my parents were art educators. Interestingly, art teachers will not expect you to look at a painting in a museum and for it to trigger a behavioural change. There is no question of how the art will insert information into the audience effectively. Instead, art educators see it as context for an exchange of ideas or a discussion.
In games, the context can also be just as important. Who is the player, why are they playing, and who are the other people involved? What is the intention? Do you want to change the player’s mind? Do you want to inform them of an important issue or impact them emotionally? It’s vital to keep in mind what you want people to carry away from it and this can decide if a game can be considered a serious game or not.
Personally, I’m very skeptical of gamification and using games as instruments. I wouldn’t just introduce the system of points and rewards to an office or a classroom. You can’t just strip those elements from games or you’d leave the very soul of what makes something a game behind.
Sabiha Ghella: I’d like to add to this that Duolingo has managed to make sense of gamification from my point of view. They took the aesthetics and the flow from games and succeeded in really making it fun to learn.
Eric Zimmerman: Indeed. Games imply a model of what it means to be human by virtue of their design. When you’re making a game, you’re implying a social, cognitive or even a political model because you’re creating it for an audience. Where gamification goes wrong, is if it has the behaviourist “rat in a cage” model and disregards what it means to be human. And Duolingo manages to thread that needle. It seems to have the player’s best interests at heart.
How does culture impact the adoption of serious games?
Glenn Gillis: It’s really important that people can see themselves in those games. Africa isn’t a single country, it’s 54 countries and made up of many regions and cultures. A lot has been stripped because of colonialism, but it’s the sense of identity and purpose that remains the highest order of what we’re trying to put into all forms of art. You can even tell some of these things from the elements that aren’t as visible. In Africa, we still struggle with low-bandwidth environments and literacy issues. It’s a cultural and economic reality and one that even leads to incredible innovation.
It’s also important what people do, not only what they know. If we’re thinking about a world in crisis and how we can keep it sustainable, we’ll need people to act. We need to actively help shape that future.
Elizabeth Newbury: One of the questions I often get is “Why games?” because they are seen as frivolous or a waste of time. There is an entire connotation of gaming culture. In the governmental and political circles I interact with, there is even hesitation to admit that they are playing games like Wordle.
And this doesn’t just happen in the US. I was recently demoing The Plastic Pipeline in Vietnam, a game about single-use plastics and it was to a group of volunteers who came to playtest this game and even when I asked them, there was hesitance to admit they play games. People seem to fail to understand that “play” is very much how we as people learn. And how games help us engage and socialize in a lot of different ways.
It’s something that you won’t have to defend or explain to a group of gamers, but still very much a struggle outside of the gaming culture.
How do you navigate talking to people who don’t understand the value of games and the positive things they can do?
Elizabeth Newbury: Everyone has played a game at some point in their life. Start from that common ground. I’m lucky that others have trailblazed the idea that we can use games and that they can be leveraged for a positive impact. But when you’re designing games, it’s important to keep in mind where your audience is starting from and what you want them to take away from it. How can you motivate your players to want to learn more? If the players can come away from the experience with newfound agency and the belief that they can become a part of the conversation on that topic, then that is considered a huge win. For example, if people play The Fiscal Ship, and afterward they feel they have learned a little more about the federal budget.
How can people from different sectors collaborate better?
Sabiha Ghella: It depends on the context and setting if it works well or not. We often collaborate with museums, and then you need to get the curators on board to actively participate, especially if the artists themselves are no longer alive. But there was one example where it worked well, with costumes of which the artist asked to never exhibit them statically. To use these in a game, was a no-brainer.
It’s also crucial to enable artists and curators to experiment with games. They need the safety to try out new things. And you need to research. For one project, I went to schools and talked to 16yo students to look at what they are playing. What interests them?
It’s also important to not stereotype. I believe that’s one of the dangers of going into an era where Artificial Intelligence is used to develop games. Pattern-recognizing machines tend to stereotype and then you risk creating products in which no one can identify themselves. It’s an upcoming issue we not only need to address as game designers but also as a society.
Elizabeth Newbury: It’s important to talk to people. If you’re going to create a game that highlights a cultural group, or if you’re engaging with a particular topic like mental health or in our case, policy research, you need to incorporate the people that are involved in those conversations, as part of the design process. Some of the best games that I’ve played recently amplify marginalized voices by working very closely with those communities
If you’re going to make a game that will be used in education, then you need to talk to the teachers and potentially to their students so you are sure the design of your characters resonates with them. With the Plastic Pipeline title, it took us several rounds of revising the characters for college students.
What are your favourite serious games?
Glenn Gillis: We do a lot of work with financial institutions and we designed a tycoon game in Roblox. The mechanics needed to be good at teaching delayed gratification and resource management. And it was a huge success as kids were phoning their banks and asking how they could open a bank account. Parents loved it, and obviously, the banks were fans as well.
Eric Zimmerman: I instantly thought of my own childhood and the games that impacted me the most. From neighbourhood games like Kick the Can and Dodgeball, but also early computer games like Sim City that really let you play around with systems and learn to understand how cause and effect works. But also Dungeons & Dragons where we even learned how bell curves, probability and mathematics worked from rolling dice. But also the creative parts like building worlds and roleplaying characters.
When we’re talking about serious games, we look beyond what’s inside the game like how mechanics work and how it’s monetized, but we look at what impact it has on the outside world. Serious games are like a frame or a lens to look at the world with. It’s about shifting the emphasis for games as a form of culture that could have a powerful impact. Games are becoming the dominant form of mass culture.
Elizabeth Newbury: The game that got me through Covid is Wingspan. It was designed to help you learn about birds, of all things.
About Game For Thought
Game For Thought (GFT) is a livestream series launched by Howest – Digital Arts and Entertainment (DAE) in collaboration with local medialab Quindo and sponsored by Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds (VAF), it tackles ethically-relevant topics in the games industry and explores the impact & implications of industry developments. Each broadcast, Allie Weis, ethics coordinator at Howest DAE, invites a selection of industry experts to discuss the topic at hand.
Welcome to another blog version of the Game for Thought series (GFT), this is a written recap of Howest DAE’s livestream series that tackles ethically-relevant topics in the games industry and explores the impact & implications of industry developments.
Reason enough for us, here at FLEGA, to communicate these topics and challenges as widely as possible. In this blog recap of the livestream, we’ll break down the most important talking points of the panel, but for those who prefer to watch the entire video, you can find it below.
In this Game For Thought panel, we dove into a lively conversation about mental health, looking at it from the perspectives of both players and developers. We explored how games can support mental well-being, make it more comfortable to talk about, and the crucial role game developers can play when they consider these aspects.
How to insert mental health themes in games without compromising the entertainment value?
Keisha Howard: It’s going to be difficult for game developers without a medical background to be responsible for tackling such themes correctly. “Mental Health” is a broad concept that can mean so many different things to different players.
Rachel Kowert: Indeed, if you’re going to create a game with mental health themes, you should be consulting with mental health professionals. You don’t have to become the expert yourself. But it also depends on what you’re making. Is it Depression Quest, a game made to provide insight into what depression is like, or are we talking about Stardew Valley or Psychonauts 2, which are entertainment games first, that happen to have some mental health topics interwoven into them. It depends heavily on what you’re trying to create.
Jean-Gobert De Coster: I’ve discussed this with a researcher who works on educative games and the conclusion was that when a game tries to be educative and tries to add a layer of fun on top of it, it doesn’t work. If the game is not fun, there is no stimulation. It doesn’t necessarily have to bring joy, but it does need to create emotions. Even a game that scares you is going to trigger some things in your brain, making you learn from the experience. If you want to develop a game that is articulated around a theme, you’re better off making the game first and then injecting the theme into the game. Build the fun mechanics first and then add the other layers on top of it. Fun comes from the experience, it’s not something you can slap onto a product afterwards.
Which games represent mental health in an inspiring way?
Rachel Kowert: I have to say Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Ninja Theory consulted with a group of psychiatrists in order to present a nuance and accurate portrayal of schizophrenia. The main character, Senua, has auditory and visual hallucinations. It wasn’t developed to be a game about schizophrenia, but it added an extra layer. They wanted it to be a good representation of what it feels like to suffer from the effects and for this, they extensively consulted with people who understand the mental condition. They then built it into the mechanisms and the narrative. It can be very powerful, as it can even help family members experience what it’s like and understand the people who have schizophrenia better.
Hellblade really set the gold standard, but many others do it great as well: GRIS, Celeste, Psychonauts 2… It’s becoming ever more prevalent in both the indie and the AAA space.
Jean-Gobert De Coster: The first game I thought about was GRIS, like has been said, mental health is a very broad topic. GRIS is about grief and depression. But I’m also thinking about games like The Stanley Parable. I’m not sure if there was an intention behind that one to have themes of schizophrenia, but there is also that little voice in your head and you decide whether to follow it.
If you’re telling a good story, at some point you’re going to tackle “a problem”. You create rich characters, and such characters have rich issues. That’s why we make story games: they carry those messages naturally. For Asfalia: Anger , we’re making a game where a child has anger that is so strong, that it wakes up in world constructed from their own anger and then meets various characters that embody different inner conflicts. When you look closely at those characters, you’ll find themes like toxicity, escapism, obsession, the frustration of not being heard.
There are thousands of games being made, on just as many different topics, so there will be something out there eventually for everyone. It’ll come naturally. As creators, if we put our heart and soul into telling a story, it’s going to be significant for some people.
Keisha Howard: Exactly. It’s super important that we are cognizant of the impact the characters and stories we create can have on other people.
How to foster a safe and supportive community for players’ mental well-being
Keisha Howard: We first need to collectively define what safety is. When we want to create a safe space, who are we giving the reins to secure that safe space? “Gamers” are one of the most diverse consumer demographics, so everyone is represented in some way. If you want to be inclusive, you’ll need to deal with people who have a personality that is different from yours, which doesn’t always feel safe. But it’s empowering, building such a space yourself or holding other companies accountable for doing what is needed for their own communities.
Communities form naturally around a game. If you play DOOM or Call of Duty, you’re going to have different type of interactions with people than if you’d be playing Animal Crossing, but that doesn’t need to mean that one game is better at making the people inside the community feel positive in a certain way. We are all responsible as members of such a community for making it happen.
Rachel Kowert: I agree with Keisha. What’s considered toxic or acceptable in one community is going to differ from one game to the next. I think the best advice I can give is for the players, to help curate the kind of space you want to be in. If you see something you don’t like, say something. That’s how the culture gets shaped from the bottom up.
Jean-Gobert De Coster: I’ve been an exchange student in Canada for a year and you’d be surprised how two cultures that seem the same from the outside actually have different ways of thinking about topics. People will often speak as if they are bringing up a general truth that is experienced the same by everyone, but they fail to realize when that is not the case. This can create frustration and even violence in the interactions.
If a game developer can help address such things, often depends on the culture of the company. An example of a good community is the one behind Hades, as the game is inclusive to many types of romance and characters, and the developers understand that there are people like this in their community as well. It’s a difficult game, and it’s dangerous in such games to have a “git gud” kind of mentality, where players just blame each other’s lack of skill in not being able to progress, but Supergiant Games has managed to foster a community where this type of thinking isn’t supported.
Asfalia: Anger is played by kids and a single-player narrative, so it will not build online communities around it, but the kids will talk to their friends and family, and as a game developer, we can still add the values into the story that we want the players to share with others.
Does the process of focusing on mental health differ in indie studios, versus larger AAA studios?
Jean-Gobert De Coster: It comes down to the values the company was built on. With an indie studio, it’s easier to uphold those because you don’t have to account for shareholders or other external factors. If you’re an indie studio, and you want to stay true to your values, it should be one of the first things you establish. Identify your core values first, and grow your company around them.
Keisha Howard: I love Jean-Gobert’s response. I look at videogames as art, and when you’re an artist, you can choose to make art for yourself. Videogames are a medium for different types of artists, from writers to designers, but when we’re thinking about studios we also have to insert profitability into the game and this can drastically change the conversation. We have an innocent attachment to games as we grow up, but then as we become adults and work in the industry, that “putting your values first” can change when you’ve got to pay your bills. This means that you’re not always going to have the chance to work in a setting that aligns with your own core values.
Rachel Kowert: For a big company that has shareholders, the bottom-line is going to be the most important. But there is research to support that burn-out and crunch diminish the bottom-line. Having to rehire new people and train them up, is far more expensive than taking care of the employees you already have. We see some AAA do this better than others, or some indies do it better than others, in terms of how they address mental health in their games and treat their employees. There is a balance that can be found, it just has to be a priority for the company, and the financial argument is there if you look for it.
Editors note: Be sure to check out Rachel’s YouTube channel Psychgeist, which tackles such topics as well.
How can companies support their employees in a positive way?
Rachel Kowert: Be a good human. Don’t overwork your employees, take care of your workforce. Take This is a place that fosters good mental health. We have the whole week off for thanksgiving, if someone is feeling burnt-out and overworked we find other people to come in and take their place or ease their workload.
If a company forces people to work longer hours and go beyond their limits, that just produces bad games. As much as we’d like to pull on the heartstrings of the ethical argument, you have to be your own best advocate. If you’re being asked to overwork and the studio is capitalizing on your desire to work on games, you have to place your own well-being first and start looking for a different studio.
Keisha Howard: I agree with Rachel. On the other hand we do have people in our company who are neuro-divergent, and for some of them, spending 20 hours on something that they really like and hyperfocusing in the task is just something that they do. As a studio we want to protect them, but everyone should be allowed to navigate their mental health in way that works for them.
It’s the studio’s job to make sure that there is space for people to work in the way that is most comfortable for their employees. But it’s important to know when you’re being exploited and abused, so you can make the proper decisions for yourself. What’s best for you might not be the best for another person, so we have to be careful not to apply a blanket approach for everyone.
What is the best way to handle a pro-crunch company?
Keisha Howard: Part of the issue is that the games industry is one of the most competitive industries to work in. If you can, you should research if the studio you’re going to work for has a pro-crunch culture and if you see yourself working in such a setting. And if abuse or exploitation is going on, don’t be afraid to call it out for what it is. If the company is transparent about this upfront, maybe just take a pass on them to take care of your own mental health. But that isn’t always as easy and not everyone has the luxury of choice, because as an adult, you also have to take care of your finances. Finding that balance is where it can get hard.
Jean-Gobert De Coster: There are several sources of crunch culture. Sometimes it can come from the team itself because they are happy to work long hours on a project they are passionate about, but I think that some of the responsibility lies with the company to prevent that. Not just for those people, but for the others. Otherwise it can create a situation where one person is overperforming and their colleagues could feel pressured into keeping up. It’s a communal responsibility to prevent crunch culture from snowballing.
Should companies hire the right people to make sure mental health issues are represented correctly?
Rachel Kowert: Absolutely. Overwatch 2 even had a huge uproar when a recent character was announced, Sigma, and he had a short backstory of coming out a mental health institute and not having shoelaces because he could hang himself with them and it being approached in a humoristic way. The mental health community immediately attacked this for being an awful thing to put out and to reinforce the idea that psychiatric treatment is an unsafe place. And Blizzard did have to come back on those decisions and approach that characters background differently.
Companies carry the responsibility and they should be consulting people to prevent them from contributing to gross overgeneralisations and stereotypes that we have about mental illness, because these are harmful.
Jean-Gobert De Coster: For Asfalia: anger, I’m consulting with a coach in schools who helps children to identify and talk about their emotions. I didn’t work specifically with a mental health expert, but it is someone who is experienced in the field of the theme for the game I’m working on.
How can you reintegrate a colleague that was burnt-out?
Rachel Kowert: There was a wonderful talk on burnout at GDC 2023 that goes over this topic. There were even two stories about reintegrating someone with a burn-out and each one took a different path. It will require the involvement of a mental health professional and it will require a person going at their own pace.
What role can mentorship and peer-support play in this?
Keisha Howard: It’s imperative. All this new technology connects us to people across the world, and allows us to be part of different communities. Allow people to make friends and give guidance to each other. “Give people their flowers” is an expression I use often. Compliment others on their achievements and it’ll be a great way to build relationships. You don’t have to take on the formal role of a mentor, just to acknowledge the good other people do.
In this Game For Thought Panel, we looked at the importance of mental health in games and in the studios that make them. It’s an important aspect to keep in mind during the process of game development and will require the advice of mental health experts, so don’t be afraid to consult with them.
Game For Thought (GFT) is a livestream series launched by Howest – Digital Arts and Entertainment (DAE) in collaboration with local medialab Quindo and sponsored by Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds (VAF), it tackles ethically-relevant topics in the games industry and explores the impact & implications of industry developments. Each broadcast, Allie Weis, ethics coordinator at Howest DAE, invites a selection of industry experts to discuss the topic at hand.
Courage XL is the best pre-GDC showcase event in San Francisco, organised by our Dutch friends and supported by our partners FIT and AWEX. Taking place on the eve of GDC24 (Sunday 17th of March), it’s a laid back way to get warmed up before the GDC madness breaks loose on Monday. Check the aftermovie of last year’s edition. You might see some familiar faces 🙂
The concept is pretty simple: play a game, get a beer. Thanks to the generous support of FIT and Awex registration of Belgian devs is free. Moreover, you’ll receive some drink tickets that you’re able to hand out to people that have played your game. Before we throw the doors open for video game enthusiasts from all over the world, there’s an exclusive VIP hour for press and publishers. Better warm up those elevator pitches!
Participating in CourageXL means
a spot to showcase at the best pre-mixer of GDC24
being part of a curated selection of about 50 games
a bar table and power socket all set upon your arrival
showcasing or play-testing your game for over 1000 GDC visitors
€50,- on drink tickets to hand out to your players
being included in a “Meet the Devs” mailing, targeting over 3000 contacts
all warmed up to pitch for the rest of the week
Only 6 spots available in the BelgianGames area so be quick to claim yours
Returning to the awesome nightclub The Great Northern, CourageXL has been a sold-out event in recent years. We expect it to be no different this time, so securing your showcase spotwill be a valuable addition to your GDC experience. Don’t wait to sign up as places are limited. Deadline for registration: February 5th.