Awardee Spotlight: Gaming For Our Future
by Decker Ngongang
In November 2009, with support from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation and in association with Lifetuner and AARP, 100 Millennials gathered in Chicago, IL, for the Millennial Return on Investment (MROI) Democracy 2.0 Summit. There, young leaders explored financial issues facing America and the Millennial Generation’s role in addressing them.
Nicola Moore and Eric Heis, founders of Gaming For Our Future, were two MROI participants who were also selected to compete in the Democracy 2.0 Award Competition. Through large and small group discussions around Americas financial crisis and its impact on Millennials, Nicola and Eric provided their unique perspective on solutions that Millennials can use to begin addressing our nation’s financial crisis. To do this, their organization, Gaming for our Future created U.O.Me. – an interactive game that helps players see how personal financial and policy decisions can affect the national debt.
The game was not created to trivialize the deficit, but to make solutions to reducing this seemingly insurmountable deficit number (over $62 trillion) seem feasible by placing our everyday choices within the context of the bigger national financial picture. Nicola and Eric’s goal with U.O.Me is to reach new audiences with nonpartisan policy education and through a game simulation, allow players to make policy decisions and personal sacrifices to pay down the national debt – which is estimated at around $201,000 per person.
Gaming Our Future was one of the five Democracy 2.0 Award winners at MROI, and with their award, the team set out to develop and market U.O.Me. The two stopped by the Mobilize.org offices this summer to talk about their project and about the Games for Change competition, which at the time they were preparing to attend. We are proud to announce that Games for Our Future pitched their game at the 7th annual Games for Change National Festival against 3 other games in development and won the “Most Likely to Succeed” award. Chosen by a panel of 8 game experts from the most impressive development firms in the gaming community, the team was awarded free expert consulting, support that will surely help their game take off.
Mobilize.org is proud of Gaming our Future, as Nicola and Erica’s success represents the potential of the 25 amazing Democracy 2.0 Awardees Mobilize.org has awarded and continues to support. Nicola and Eric began their project with a grant that emerged from proposing their game to their peers at last year’s Democracy 2.0: Millennial Return on our Investment Summit, but they are not done. They still require additional funding to finish their game. Please show your support by visiting the Gaming for Our Future KickStarter page to find out how you can help Nicola and Eric reach their $10,000 goal to launch U.O.Me. Then, make sure you check back next month for our next Awardee Spotlight.
Visit the Gaming For Our Future on Facebook.
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