Games for Change announced the finalists for the Games for Change Awards, to be presented at the 10th Annual Games for Change Festival. The special 10th anniversary event will take place over three days from June 17-19th at New World Stages in New York City.

The Games for Change Festival is dedicated to bringing game creators and other individuals together to discuss and celebrate the positive social impact of games. Over the years, the festival has played host to speakers ranging from VP Al Gore to retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Accessibility advisor AccessAble Games is looking to raise $40,000 via Start Some Good for a Spanish and English language game called My Carnival that helps children with cystic fibrosis maximize their pulmonary functions.

Organizers of the Games for Change event announced the dates and confirmed speakers for the 10th Annual Games for Change Festival. The special 10th anniversary event will take place over three days from June 17-19th at New World Stages in New York City. The Games for Change Festival is dedicated to giving "serious games" creators a venue to discuss using game technology to make the world a better place.

In the latest issue of the science journal Nature two neuroscientists say that their colleagues should work with game developers to help create games that can be used to boost brain function and improve well-being. Daphne Bavelier of the University of Rochester and Richard J.

Organizers of the annual National STEM Video Game Challenge - Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and E-Line Media announced today that student submissions of original video games and game designs is now opened at www.stemchallenge.org. In its third year, the annual challenge hopes to inspire and motivate interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) by tapping into students’ enthusiasm for playing and making video games.

Ball State University (in Muncie, Indiana) professor Ronald Morris and computer science professor Paul Gestwicki have teamed up with graduate students to create a Unity-based game that teaches fourth grade students about the Underground Railroad (thanks to Polygon). The game is called The Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley River and puts students in the shoes of a runaway slave who must make his or her way to Canada where they can live a free life.

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop and E-Line Media have revealed the participating sponsors and partners for the 2013 National STEM Video Game Challenge. For the third year, the AMD Foundation, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) will once again serve as key sponsors for the Challenge. New partners include the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and the Hive NYC Learning Network.

BVM Capital announced that it has made a seed round investment in health and fitness gaming company Fitness Interactive Experience (FIX). FIX is dedicated to making fitness and health fun, accessible and socially connected using massively multiplayer online games.

Pixel Academy, a New York City-based company founded by former Lead Game Designer at Nickelodeon (Mike Fischtha) has been conducting workshops for children ages 8-12 all over the city at locations such as homes and public libraries. These workshops teach children video game design, 3D printing, Arduino fashion design, and other fun technology based courses.

The 86-officer strong police department in Canton, Ohio is purchasing video game-like simulation technology called the MILO Range Pro 4 system. Developed and sold by IES Interactive Training, the MILO Range Pro 4 system offers more than 500 crime-scene scenarios to improve police skills in the field - from talking a suspect down in a threatening situation to last resort tactics like shooting suspects. The police department expects to have its officers using the system by sometime early next year.

A new video game that will be highlighted at the Games for Change conference hosted by RMIT in Melbourne on Thursday and Friday hopes to raise awareness about refugees seeking asylum in Australia. Refugees often take dangerous journeys on the open seas to reach the shores of friendly democracies. The game puts players in the shoes of these "boat people" who are trying to make their way to places like Australia to find safe haven and the kind of freedom and opportunities not available to them in their native lands.

Jennifer Pahlka, founder and Executive Director of Code for America ("the Peace Corps. for geeks") sent us some more information on the October 24th event scheduled to take place in New York City and some details on why they planned the vent in the first place. In case you are not familiar with Code for America, they are a group of web designers, programmers and other passionate geeks that work with local governments to create innovative solutions using all kinds of technology - including video games.

New research sponsored by the Centre for Ageing Research and Development in Ireland (also known as CARDI) suggest that using video games can help the elderly improve their balance and avoid falls that are often devastating and debilitating.

The AbleGamers Foundation has released "Includification," a 48 page, fully illustrated how-to guide for videogame developers and publishers who are interested in road-mapping the exact solutions needed to design a game that is accessible to individuals with various disabilities.

Minecraft developer Mojang has teamed up with the United Nations to create a new initiative called Block By Block.

Researchers at Yale are developing a video game for the iPad that hopes to prevent HIV infection among ethnic minority adolescents through the use of interactive entertainment. Their research is based on the entire process appears in Games for Health, a new journal focused on using game technology as a tool for improving health and well-being.

Using the Unity 3D game development engine, researchers from North Carolina State (who are leading the development), Arizona State University, and Indiana University, have developed a simulation that allows crime scene investigators to look at a crime scene from multiple angles.

Zynga is loaning several of its developers to create a social charity game on Facebook. Development on a "social action" game based on the book Half the Sky by Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is well underway according to GamesBeat.

The book is about "turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide." The game will be released on Facebook on November 13.

Valve has revealed Steam for Schools, a cool initiative that brings the joys of learning with Portal 2 to America's classrooms, at the Games For Change Festival. Steam For Schools, launching in a limited beta, will provide a limited Steam Client and a tailored version of Portal 2, along with the level editor and a workshop for hosting and organizing user-created levels. It will be free to teachers, who will have administrator access so that they can control what levels get shared.

The AbleGamers Foundation will demonstrate the AbleGamers’ Accessibility Arcade at Abilities Expo at the Schaumburg Convention Center in Chicago on June 29 to July 1. In its 30th year, the Abilities Expo focuses on improving the lives of people with disabilities, their families, caregivers and healthcare professionals across the country. The Expo features three days of workshops, demonstrations and displays of cutting-edge products and services.

The U.S. National Endowment for the Arts will fund four games that explore climate change and literature. This will be the first time the NEA funds video games since it changed its policy in May 2011 to include the category.

The Florida National Guard has found a novel way of helping its state's unemployed soldiers work in the private sector: a program called Operation KickStart. The program uses gamification techniques to educate and teach participants in a game-like social platform environment. It also provides them with support through mentors and coaches that can teach them the best practices for starting a new career and being successful at it.

This year's Games for Change Festival is set for June 18-20 in New York City. The event dedicated to promoting social change through video games will offer plenty of activities this year including case studies, roundtables, lectures, demos, and more. Featured speakers for this year's event include Jane McGonigal, New York Times bestselling author (Grand Theft Childhood) and co-founder of SuperBetter Labs; leading researcher, Dr.

XEOPlay has launched Tilt World, a game that hopes to "end climate change" through "play sourcing." Nicole Lazzaro, CEO of XEOPlay introduced Tilt World to the audience at DEMO Spring 2012 in Santa Clara, CA. In Tilt World, players control Flip, a tadpole who is trying to conquer climate change by planting trees in the real world using the power of players (playsourcing) and through a partnership with WeForest.org.

Epic Games has inked a long-term deal with Virtual Heroes, a division of Applied Research Associates, Inc. (ARA). The Virtual Heroes Division of Applied Research Associates creates collaborative interactive learning solutions for healthcare, federal systems, and corporate training markets. Virtual Heroes will use Unreal Engine technology to create interactive educational and training software to be used by various U.S. government departments and agencies.

Dan Porter, CEO of OMGPOP, will be a featured speaker at the 2012 Gamification Summit in San Francisco (June 19 – 21). Porter will talk about the techniques his company used to make their ultra popular Pictionary-like drawing game, Draw Something, so successful among users.

Phaedra Boinodiris, serious games program manager at IBM, writes a guest editorial on Forbes exploring the way that games can be used to energize and enhance other things besides research projects. The point of her editorial is that researchers have been helped greatly by games created to solve problems that take advantage of "collective intelligence," and global participation.

Red Hill Studios is using the motion technology found in the Xbox 360 and Wii consoles to help people with Parkinson's disease improve their gait and balance. Researchers have used the technology to help stroke victims in a similar fashion, so aiming the technology at other afflictions makes perfect sense. Red Hill is collaborating with the UCSF School of Nursing to develop the game.

The United States Army is testing a new PC strategy game that teaches captains who are being deployed to Afghanistan how to think like local village elders do. The game is called CultureShock: Afghanistan and is being tested at the U.S. Army Engineer School via the captains’ career course at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. The purpose of the game, according to its creators is to teach cultural awareness and to show officers what drives the decision making process of local leaders whom U.S. forces will have to encounter and communicate with.

NASA has released an interactive educational video game today called NetworKing that its Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) network operates. The release of the video game coincides with the close of World Space Week, Oct. 4-10. Developed by the Information Technology Office at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California, its developers say that NetworKing gives players an insider's perspective into how astronauts, mission controllers and scientists communicate during space missions.