UN SDG and Games for Change Summit

Jude Ower, Founder and CEO of Playmob presented at the first ever SDG and G4C (Games for Change) Summit, held at the United Nations HQ on 17th July 2023. It was the first time the industry came together to host an event with the UN, to explore the intersection of games and the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals).

The day heard from experts such as Sam Barratt from UN Environment on the formation of the Playing for the Planet Alliance, Cassie Flynn and Boaz Paldi from UNDP on using games to change climate policy globally and also from the games industry such as Jeffrey Burrell from Riot Games, Leslie Quinton from Ubisoft and Cynthia Williams from Hasbro.

Jude presented, with Mathias Norvig, CEO of Sybo Games (Subway Surfers) on the ways the UN can collaborate with the games industry. As part of this talk, the GREAT project was presented and a call for stakeholders from the UN to the games industry was made. The GREAT project builds on the important work UNDP carried out leveraging games to deploy Mission 1.5 to millions of gamers globally, and collecting the largest set of responses ever, on climate attitudes. This data was used to inform policy decisions in over 50 countries! However, how do we inform people of policy change, and show that progress is being made? This is exactly how GREAT intends to ‘close the loop’.