Serious Game Design For Kids In The Favela
In January 2022, a team from Games for Health is traveling to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to teach a group of 38 children in the art of game design. The project is carried out in collaboration with EduMais and support of Fontys ICT. EduMais is an organization that provides high quality education to children for free through volunteers, while Fontys generously provided 20 laptops to help make this project a success!
The project encourages the creation of digital games by children from the favelas through a framework named “I’ve made my game”. The process, based on collaboration and imagination, allows children to be involved in intellectual and affective activities of negotiation, ideas development, results analysis, interaction, and creation.
Play is an important aspect in all people’s lives, but even more so in children’s. Why? Because through playing children learn to think creatively and interact socially.
Through play, they develop physically, discover a slew of emotional skills, and they learn how to process the world. In short, play is pivotal to a child’s development. Play is how children learn.
