Macarthur Foundation: Games feel like a million bucks
The MacArthur Foundation announced a few months ago that it would make the first grant of more than a million dollars for a game development project. That project is the Academic Advanced Distributed Learning Co-Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, which will be developing tools, curricula, and “innovative game modules.” While the grant for a games project is new for MacArthur, the aim of the games’ instructional content – teaching media literacy – is one which its PR department reports is "of tremendous interest to the foundation."
A major obstacle to funding video game projects, according to Connie Yowell, is the fact that members of foundation boards are simply clueless about video games. Many of them are older and do not see a link between games, learning, and the decisions players might make to take action on problems they care about. Her foundation’s board is all over fifty. "So I think you know that this is not an easy sell," she confided.
Yowell gave some specific hints on getting social-issue games funded. First, she notes her foundation seeks “to enhance our existing work” through the medium. She also noted that applying with help from the Games For Change organizers would likely strengthen an application. Foundations generally like to see applicants working with organizations which already have a well-established presence in the field and demonstrated ability to achieve results.
Second, she emphasized that MacArthur wants to know a lot more about best practices in socially responsible gaming. To that end, they are funding extensive research on how children use digital media, and what exactly they are learning when they do so. “Are kids really different in the way they learn?” she asked. “We think that they are, but there’s not that much data yet.”
Finally, she urged activists to carefully consider proposing projects for “incremental” change, not sweeping societal programs. "We who are in the more conservative world need to have some low-hanging fruit," she admonished the audience. Studies with solid numbers and metrics are what she needs, she says, to make the case to her board that game projects are worth funding. Other speakers on her panel agreed.
"Think about the broader statement you want to make about what is the value of games for the social good," Yowell said.
One of the positive sides of foundation funding is its independence from government money. That means freedom from whatever way the political winds are currently blowing. Yowell noted that foundations are able to devote themselves to a long-term view of the social good.
For-profit or not-for-profit?
But a nonprofit route is not for everyone. Foundations’ lines of funding for nonprofit media efforts have traditionally been small. They are often limited, as well, covering short-term efforts.
Some change-minded game developers find themselves torn between venture capital and foundation funding. Impact Games co-producer Eric Brown says choosing a funding model has been a thorny issue, and that nonprofit funders they’ve approached haven’t been interested in funding development of their game PeaceMaker. Instead, funders want to see data proving a project will be effective, which is impossible to come by before the game has actually been made.
Meanwhile, if Impact Games shapes itself as for-profit, it can attract venture capital, but it loses other benefits. “In our case [forming a nonprofit] helps us to maintain the mission of the company without giving in to possible directions that might focus more on return on investment,” Brown said in an email interview. It also validates their work and gives them access to particular markets.
Brown says assessment of the game’s ability to achieve its goals is very important to its developers. “These are things that we are very interested in doing,” Brown insisted, “but they’re not necessarily things that we would be able to accomplish with limited commercialization and investment funds.” Between the lack of venture funding and the cart-before-the-horse demands of nonprofit funders, it’s hard for developers like Impact Games to find the capital they need for all aspects of production.
Some Games for Change developers have come up with their own solutions to the problem. One of these is 23 YYZee, producers of Pax Warrior. Co-producer Andreas Ua’Siaghail said 23 YYZee decided to choose a fee-based model because of the way nonprofit funders work. Many foundations seek to fund local initiatives. Pax Warrior has gone international, taking its game about the conflict in Rwanda to countries from Canada to Uganda. As a result, getting foundations to fund them directly is more difficult than having local, state, or provincial educational institutions pay for the game.
Ua’Siaghail’s development team, like Brown’s, is also chagrined by the cost-benefit analysis of seeking foundation funding. “We've got numbers on this and it ain't pretty, especially with government-based funds,” he wrote in an email interview. “You can easily spend more than you receive from a given fund. Clearly this is not sustainable.”
And like Brown, Ua’Siaghail is also worried by foundations’ focus on research to the exclusion of development. “We have tons of knowledge being acquired through research, very little of it finding useful outlet or even being built upon,” he objects. “This knowledge ends up being squandered. A mixed approach to funding that partners business with funders and government is best.”
