The first place winner for 2012 is "DatingDangers1.0" from KoKo in Croatia. On the surface, the game is an interactive quiz about dating violence but it becomes quickly apparent that there is something more at play here. As the game evolves from rudimentary quiz to societal critique, the player will be challenged to demonstrate their knowledge of dating violence.
Experiencing all of the game will require several re-plays to explore the various tracks. Do you know enough about dating violence to win a cookie?
The first place winner for 2011 was Jean HEHN of Another Kind. He lives in Belgium and his winning entry is "Finding Jane." We hope that you enjoy his entry and we would just caution you to remember that this is a game - if you are confronted with an abuser or any dangerous situation in real life make sure that you contact the police! It's always better to be safe than sorry.
For assistance and advice about teen dating violence in the U.S. you can call our friends at the National Dating Abuse Helpline at 1-866-331-9474. They can be reached 24/7 and have both English and Spanish speakers available.
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Leigh Alexander is news director of Gamasutra, author of the Sexy Videogameland weblog, and writes reviews, features and cultural commentary for a variety of outlets including Variety, Wired, Slate, The Escapist, Kotaku, and Paste Magazine. She has previously served as Kotaku's Associate News Editor and run Worlds in Motion, covering the business of online games, social networks and virtual worlds. She has chaired and consulted on Worlds in Motion's summit at the Game Developers' Conference.
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Michele Perryman Beam, writing as "Mishka" is the founder of "Mishka's Musings." She is a fashion blogger and personal style consultant who writes about fashion, fitness, and furnishings from the perspective of a mother with young children. In her spare time she volunteers as an advocate working to prevent cancer and dating violence. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky with her two children and family dogs.
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Dr. Ian Bogost is an award-winning videogame designer and media philosopher. He is Associate Professor at Georgia Tech and Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC. He is also the author or co-author of seven books, including Unit Operations, Persuasive Games, Racing the Beam, Newsgames, and the forthcoming How To Do Things with Videogames and Alien Phenomenology. His most recent game, A Slow Year, won the Vanguard and Virtuoso awards at the 2010 Indiecade Festival.
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Dr. Erica Bowen is a Registered Forensic Psychologist with the Health Professions Council, a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society, and Reader in the Psychology of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) at Coventry University. Dr. Bowen is also the director of the Violence and Interpersonal Aggression (VIA) research group and the academic lead on the EU Daphne funded project "Changing Attitudes to Violence in Adolescence" (CAVA) which has developed "Green Acres High School," a video game used as part of a classroom curriculum to prevent violence in teenage relationships.
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Simon Carless is an EVP at UBM Tech, overseeing the Game Developers Conferences in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Germany, and China. He also oversees the double Webby award-winning Gamasutra website, and the Black Hat information security conferences. He has previously worked as a lead game designer at Kuju Entertainment, Eidos Interactive and Atari.
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Brian Crecente is a journalist and columnist, a founding editor and the News Editor for Polygon, he also writes Good Game, a weekly column internationally syndicated by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. Crecente was named one of the 20 most influential people in the video game industry over the past 20 years by GamePro in 2009 and one of gaming's Top 50 journalists by Edge in 2006. He was featured in a 5280 biography. He has spoken at the Smithsonian, GDC, PAX and UCLA. Crecente is married and has one child. He is Jennifer Ann Crecente's uncle.
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Drew Crecente is founder and executive director of Jennifer Ann's Group. He is also the founder of L.I.V.E., an organization focusing on the impact of IPV (Intimate Partner Violence) on the practice of Law, and speaks about IPV, teen dating violence, and the use of video games for social change. His speaking engagements include the National Youth at Risk Conference, the Global Humanitarian Summit, Games for Health, Games for Health Europe, and GDC conferences. He is Jennifer Ann Crecente's father.
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Danielle DeZao is founder and president of h<3rt1, an organization working to eliminate dating violence. She has appeared on the ABC series "What Would You Do?" (shown here with John Quinones); participated in discussions about teen dating violence at the White House; and been featured in CosmoGirl for her efforts to prevent teen dating violence. |
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Jane McGonigal, PhD is the New York Times bestselling author of Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World - and the inventor and co-founder of SuperBetter, a game that has helped more than 200,000 players tackle real-life health challenges such as depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and traumatic brain injury.
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Dr. Elizabeth L. Richeson is a Psychologist in El Paso, Texas, the head of the Advisory Board for Jennifer Ann's Group, and former president of the Texas Psychological Foundation. She is an expert on teen dating violence, appears regularly on news and talk shows, and lectures nationwide on a variety of issues related to teenagers, young adults, and relationships. She is Jennifer Ann Crecente's grandmother.
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Ben Sawyer is the co-founder of Digitalmill, a games consulting firm based in Portland, Maine. He is the co-founder of the Serious Games Initiative, a project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and also co-founder of the Games for Health project which connects health professionals, researchers, and game developers in order to advance the development of health games and game technologies. The Games for Health project receives major funding from the Pioneer Portfolio, an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
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Jo Sharpen is the manager of the Children and Young People's Project at AVA (Against Violence and Abuse) in the U.K. and wrote the national U.K. toolkit on children, young people and domestic violence for practitioners, Improving Safety, Reducing Harm, published by the Department of Health in 2009. She has also written numerous policy briefings, guidance and training packages on violence against women and girls; currently she is writing a book on domestic violence in teenage relationships.
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Elin Stebbins Waldal is a speaker; the award-winning author of Tornado Warning, A Memoir of Teen Dating Violence And Its Effect On A Woman's Life; and the founder of Girls kNOw More, an organization whose mission is to help build confidence in middle-school-age girls. She lives in Southern California with her husband, three children, and their family dog.
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