Ok and join this train today how can diving be used to promote peace i really could be glad of a chat with developers about using video games to build communities and tackle social issues tell us what you think by joining the you tube chat or tweeting us out. You know being a refugee coming its not easy you know what is next what are you going to leave tomorrow you know going to leave tomorrow one day my mom to buy for me a computer she said on monday for the 3 years it was like a gun moment that just never thinking everything is possible for me 73 percent of the population in south sudan is under the age of 13 they are born with the will raise up in the wall so the a mindset an audit youre just going to bog wall i decided to ditch my so programming so that i can make a piece. As a refugee living in uganda and had to walk 3 hours to an internet cafe internet cafe so he could charge his computer and play video games and now is the founder and c. E. O. Of 2 new games hes winning awards partnering with other developers to create games with a social impact lol of course is not alone in the pursuit of video gaming is a multibillion dollar industry and as its grown so too have the number of civic minded Game Developers organizations and conferences working to educate players about humanitarian issues from the plight of refugees and migrants to the horrors of war so. Welcome to the stream and you so much you brought friend this season upon that is the president of games for change thats a Nonprofit Organization that brings together game creators and social innovators and around me is smile is a video game developer and cofounder of the netherlands based studio. He also helped start the game well developer conference hello everybody its good to have you here i should really say thank you to your mom because without my mother sitting it will literally but also because the subject matter let me just i looked around the internet i found obama here he is right here the story about how you got into gaming was all about what your mother did in order to help you get into gaming you spent all of your life in a refugee camp and he loved video games how did you even get to play them. From a country with a civil war. The war started a long time ago to flee to the roof and when they were going to the roof and you come i was born on the way and then from there growing up as children would love you know the good thing about video games it doesnt matter with him. Where you are you have to make sure that you have to find something to play and formula growing up in a refugee camp i never thought id video game a credible people just fall from heaven. Reading these things that i will follow. And one day i went to like. Christian center and i saw a computer and i was asking my mother like what is that and she said i was a computer and i was like i want to use that one day and then like i went to an internet cafe and my friend the store for me a video game called grand theft auto like when i started playing it. Like when i stopped playing i was like you know this is a great video game and how can we be able to use game 4 for impact game to bring peace and youre missing the thought that because most kids when theyre playing grand theft auto are not thinking how do i change the well because i think you have any point the reason is because what i was seeing in the game was actually what is happening in my country and i was like how can i do use this to be able i because im from a country that 73 percent of the population is under the age of 30 these are Young Children who were born where they were raised in war and when they Start Playing this kind of game they call it can be able to change their mindset and i went and i told my mother need a lot of and she loved me and she like what im going to do with a computer and theres no money theres no place where you can charge it and she spent almost 3 years looking for 300. 00 to buy from a computer so one day this is the money and i was like wow what would i do with it is the best series. Like walk every day because i know making video game is the best thing that i can be able to do because video game can be able to you know change the mindset of people and people can be able to play it and the whole idea is about you know when you play a game it become part of your life especially when you play with a friend when your friend kill your character you say like why did you kill me and why did you kill my correct and become a part of your life and thats why i like when we have cycle of impact game it can be like. Industry grows every day so for their handful of people in our audience who dont play video games because our audience think they actually love this topic and i want to share that i want to share with them this this page this is grand theft auto so this is what really caught your attention there it was actually grand theft auto by city with just one of the wind spike on line weve got a common problem someone who writes in on twitter that 1st person shooter games whats your grand theft auto could arguably be considered one of those glorify killing and they glorify the military so you talks briefly about the link between theme that game and seeing what was going on in your own country but then how did that how did you take that next step to say im going to turn it on its head and i wont be glorifying killing i wont be glorifying shooting and thats why we become a game to both of us because what we have to identify is just the problem and the solution that we want to solve and for me i saw a solution of conflict you know what is opening in the world today i believe true peace is something that is built over time and when i Start Playing video games that if we can be able to create Something Like grants that will it so we can actually turn it around depend on what is your what is your solution to the problem that you want we want to. Give people pause we have a responsibility to be able to create things that can bring social impact along a lot of them and thats why i would like susan to talk about the game. Balances and. Such an extraordinary site was a wonderful way to solve the problem. Rather you found you know how did you find. In Johannesburg South africa the image 1st of all and i think if i was not mistaken well that was your 1st International Flight and her as well yes and then again. Low as it was promoting is his game and he had been invited by the organizers ms festival to show this game that had gone viral through social media actually. To the point where caught the attention of even organizing i remember meeting the law and the law you were talking about you know being so amazed by that community in south africa very young infant unity at the time as well and people helping each other sort of wondering about whether Something Like that could exist that homeless outside on. The refugee camp and they come to the conclusion that you could just make that yourself if you want to. And it was i remember being very impressed about that already you would want to be modified im just going to say that while the festival was called that the lal you go out to the refugee camp in northern uganda maidens at home its called sam well you know what counting carol is when people say you know. This was this was a phenomenal game obviously as a low point it out games are an International Language day extend far beyond. Far beyond just the stories that we tell playfulness and player such international such international finance. I travel a lot or for my work trying to promote investment in emerging territories in developing countries and one thing i notice is that no matter where in the world you go if you put a ball on the ground and get it to work somebody theyre going to pick it back you dont need to speak their language and single use. Games to to tell this message that is. You know you would hope is a very global message but its such a privilege to many of us in the world that we grew up in peace to see the law use his experiences and told that story to tell that perspective through this video game was extremely impressive and then the drive he had to to make that a bigger thing to turn that into. A structural effort both for himself and in the industry i was just i was incredibly blessed that i dont you go on. And see what youve done since obviously its been. Its been incredible. The push of me to make this a topic i do you know im thinking season 8 ins that you take the platform the gang platform and then youre trying to do something more with it how do you do that how do you say well this game is different this game is about social change but youre using the tools that you would do just to have some yes so theres a wonderful aspect to games that are different than other forms of entertainment you know games are ubiquitous they are in every home theyre every hand with through mobile as far as but unlike television or film or even of reading a book games have this interactive element to it right that you know play or a sense of agency where you can step into the role of another character you can change the outcome of the trial and error you can fail you can die come back and try again so all of those components make games a very compelling platform in which to explore social issues and to do it in an aging way where you are as a player you are deeply immersed in the experience and thats just an amazing place to start. And then you add in the experts who. Climate change are might be an expert in that. In conflict resolution right along with the Creative Team and the Developer Team its such a collaborative effort. To build a game that had that kind of connection can actually come about come away with some outcomes that impact something you want to play or what it would you like alert that experience and i thought is the appeal rami thats the appeal for one of our Community Members so this is a chief lars on twitter who says that games can introduce ethical questions that the player has to choose from a question such as justified killing committing crimes in order to survive sacrificing one to save many cetera games influence thought and Critical Thinking more than behavior from your take on that yeah i think games when people think of games they very much think of one specific element of games which is the entertainment slash distraction part of games which are both are important things like any medium games have the power to put us in fantasies in our fancies in different situations in perspectives but the other side of games that people dont think about very often is that games have been used to train the professionals of flight simulators doctors but also to teach us perspectives for me honestly the largest part of my history knowledge comes from a game called age of empires which simulated old all that is sort of bottles right and at the same time i think what is really interesting about games is that weve seen when game started it was thats not that long ago right this medium is what 60 years maybe 80 years old video games as a medium and that think you just werent very powerful so a lot of what games were built on was this very simple idea of things are either hitting each other or theyre not at each other and if theyre getting each other something happens that if theyre not hitting each other nothing out of that obviously its pretty much sums up my childhood. That pretty much means that youre either eating something or attacking something or getting something for shooting something so thats where games started butt. And i ask you this got more powerful as this medium grew weve seen of their very interesting incidental displeased that basically introduces people to the role of a border guard at a fictional east european country in which the players confronted with. A new will some specific ones that you that weve got so that we can show people because its very hard to to say picture it unless you actually see it so that it was a game that you said that we should look at is code that war of mine tell us a little bit about it before we. Yeah this war mind is a game by published. It looks as an example of what happens when more people are introduced into in development traditionally the games history is very western very japanese focused. To develop a. Love story you get these different perspectives so whats a world where the us or europe likes to really take a pause because we want to play a little bit of. I lived through hell with these people. We were a group we would do anything to stay ill. Never forget stays. Things you see in war. Stay with you. Forever and ill give this to you this person says that games about social change dont tell because people play video games to have fun not to be preached to do you think that something that you are worried about or should be worried about do you agree with them i mean does a very good question and to me i actually thought about it when i started going to games and though the whole the whole idea is because you know when about creators create a new video game for the church and some of them become independent and the public by their own and when we look for example when we talk about the game or what i was actually. The Global Gaming citizen and to see that here i mean of me because you look so happy beaming there so to see a video game for such a being for such a good to be being recognized as a kind of a platform its actually like. People to understand why the Industry Needs a kind of video game so it its a journey and you dont have to give about it even if again its about the way you design the game so when you design the game when players because players sometimes choose want to play and thats how i designed my salon game depend i do i do like growth of what i do i do like it depend on the gameplay and also like the way you designed the game so people would be able to play the game by what they choose not because its essential. To sit. Actually exclusionary you could make a very fun theres also. Some of that here yes so there are also games that are used that are distributed not necessarily through a direct. Where you are competing against games and you have that challenge in words to entertain and shop people and basically with a game lets say like rat auto but there are other ways in which these games are being used in the classroom is that a platform on which you address that lie. You told us about that tracking cancer was an extraordinary thing thats a little clip of that and then you can explain is that as an example about how you can educate as well as and to tell. You how they celebrate off. As maybe you know. 2 its not good. Question my heart with the radiation and it kind of freaks me out. Could be another pair. Yeah this is a remarkable emotional game called that dragon cancer made by newman at games and it was a fashion example of how you can tell a very powerful personal story through a Game Experience and its a narrative that is personal for them it was actually about kind of a badass to a son that they lost to cancer at a very young age and while this game was more was produced as a personal expression and helped so many people deal with loss and understand what that what that experience is like and then the game studio are actually working with pharmaceutical the Hospital Companies the top to create experiences that help patients go through this the journey knowing that theyre not alone and understand how they can challenge the always variances in medicine the kind of examples of how games can be used for therapy games can be used and as i said in education it could be used in training and simulate to me that relating to a Sexual Harassment within the work for you use these tools and things in which they engage people in a game environment and they can be incredibly effective. And give one more example and this one comes from a developer who says they can be used to help teach people about the refugee and migrant crisis so we got a video comment from philip de bron x. And he is the developer of a game called today is a new day and heres what he told the string. At todays new day we produced a game that puts the player in the shoes of a refugee trying to cross the schengen border along the socalled balkan route now the reason we did that was because its been 3 years since leukemia put up a razor wire fence on its all the border which didnt nothing to curb the flow of migrations it only made and we think more dangerous for everyone and at the same time it prevented some more human friendly policies to be implemented in slovenia as well we want to remind people that the fence is still there we wanted to at least open up the conversation but in the end we failed to succeed because our government is currently considering putting up even more of the fence so philip runs a Company Called today as a new day and the game that im showing you on my screen now you can see it here its called razor wire but rami there are a lot of hurdles to getting a game like this on the market and then making a difference because there are things like governments standing in the way of peoples progress here according to what he said in that video what do you make of his comment. I mean when you think about it every every media around these issues big game in which you discuss u. S. Involvement in for example iraq or afghanistan and the worse there is obviously going to run into the u. S. This is happened before questions about the Israeli Palestinian conflict run into issues on the astore these are parts of creating media. Wind larger structural issues with. You wanted to push back and i think that is a very generic media problem right like this is not specific to games this is just part of games now you know our folk art people express themselves and how to talk about issues of their life and issues of this world you are you all were discussing talent and you have many things going on including your own company and one of your new foot outside sitting like that. So thats how its the license sign in the box that people on my laptop what it has is actually a board game that people look here on my laptop then youll be out to see the book game here its going to look down here in folding students what happens if we were able to open the box with one of the books but if we were able to do that what weve done is we played this guy so this is a wider game why the main unit in iraq make so its a game about helping players to own a conflict and cranio own was a mission to a conflict so the reason why i quit it is because we have a lot of refugees and they have no access to it to deter them so i made a conflict resolution games which is for peace and conflict resolution and the game is about i win the auction call i was like god like you know you know its calling where you can be able to get like you know sit together with somebody and discuss conflict for example the game i ask you what you know what to play a tune in. In a country that is going through a conflict and how theyre going to be able to create their own conflict to that country so all the whole idea is by simply owning a conflict. Resolution to the conflict and owning the conflict so lou i think you answered the question of nostradamus who said video games are mostly played by the privileged kids in African Homes thats thats their perspective there so this kind of speaks to that but theres another question we just got from zana taxes those are these games available for us to try out or buy i got as far as finding 2 new games dot com but i couldnt find a Download Link yet were launching a game in december so it will be right in no way the game is available on the website as well so its a good when you can be able to find a game that you know i was looking at and i was looking at some pictures from. Laos version 2 of salon game and im looking here so this is an image so this is one of the pictures and im looking at the background and then there was a picture of the new album she was he was visiting a refugee camp a little while ago in the background what you see im wondering if youre really going to affect change culturally you need to understand it completely you cant just be going over this this is cool this is engaging do you need that extra little bit of background to add authenticity im wondering yes you just said the words authenticity you know i think in many Creative Media to be honest and true and having a sensitivity to the subjects that youre exploring is critical and to be able to have someone like well tell his personal story in a way that reaches many people is. Amazing opportunity if though you lets say youre a game designer and hashan about a subject absolutely or to bring people into your project or do the research so the. You and you can demonstrate and explore these issues as honestly as you have here we have i think youre showing some video of. The teenagers making games so we wrote a program where inner city youth in cities across the u. S. Where we inspire and empower you to design games around social issues that ask ben to dive deep into issues and we do have any that have to do with endangered species is arrogant right at the very end of the show susanna in a sentence youre organizing what coming up in a sentence i remember the change best well is going to be a gathering of over a 1000 people interested in the impact big games and Virtual Reality can have on the world cup. Well into this tweet from koshi who says while the founder and c. E. O. Of 2 new games is such an inspiration Love Learning about another african brother influencing the gaming world. Thanks so much for a thing on the street today really. Going to see. Our planet this woman as never before with profound consequences called cool life on. The worlds leading Scientists Say that is still time to act on it s. O. S. Sets out the facts on the Science Behind the issues affecting our planet. And brings you what people across the globe are doing to tire of the crisis around climate teso us on aljazeera. The shocking treatment of disabled people in rumanian state run kept in different cages you can not have access to a toilet or water institutions funded by the European Union he has his hands and his feet tied to the bed 5 years after highlighting these abuses people in power returns to rumania in a 2 part series and discovers the scandal runs the field europes recurring shame on al jazeera. Hello im Barbara Starr in london these are the top stories on aljazeera police in the democratic republic of congo say that 4 people were killed on monday during protests in the eastern town of benny 3 protesters and one policeman gunfire was heard as civilians marched on a Un Peacekeeping base in the area the locals are protesting against what they feel is a lack of protection from the un after a recent spate of attacks by on dreadful groups the Congolese Army has been deployed to stop the menace called for calm said it. The mood will be that we are calling on our