“Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” and “Beasts of the Southern Wild” producer and media incubator Cinereach has launched a climate-themed video game design competition.
Kicking off Monday, “Just Play: A Game Jam for Climate Futures” carries a grand prize of $10,000 and is designed to “challenge game makers, artists, and developers to explore a broader range of climate futures that will inspire new perspectives,” per the contest’s description.
Submissions open Monday at JustPlayJam and run through May 17. Participants will be receive a Cinereach toolkit that includes findings from its recent climate visibility workshop with Good Energy.
Final prototypes and award winners will be showcased at the Hollywood Climate Summit’s closing night party on June 28.
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The contest marks the second version of Cinereach’s “Just Play” video game development competition, produced in collaboration with Anima Interactive and powered by Dreamspace, with the first being “Just Play: A Game Jam for Justice.” That competition saw 100 participants and 43 game submissions with a focus on justice-centric themes from developers in 19 countries.
“Just Play provides an opportunity to learn from our partners and the gaming community which is an important part of Cinereach’s new adventure operating as a story incubator,” Cinereach CEO Jennifer Strachan said. “We’re building on decades of work supporting the film community, adding in research-backed climate narrative strategies, so we can better support the next generation of storytelling that sparks curiosity, empathy, and agency.”
Anima Interactive founder and creative director Karla Reyes added: “We are thrilled to partner with Cinereach and the Hollywood Climate Summit for our next iteration of Just Play. At Anima Interactive, we are inspired by narrative and culture change movements driven by film and tv. We believe there’s immense untapped potential to apply storytelling techniques from Hollywood to video games and drive real-world impact. Entertainment moves culture, and culture moves society. Just Play: Games for Climate Futures is an early exploration of this theory in action.”
