Games With Purpose: What We Learned at the ‘Play, Learn, Innovate’ Workshop
What happens when you put game designers, researchers, educators, and cultural experts in one virtual room and ask: How can games make a real impact in the world? You get a jam-packed 90 minutes of insight, provocation, and possibility.
That’s exactly what happened at ‘Play, Learn, Innovate: Uniting Research, Education & Game Industry’, an online workshop held on 7 May 2025. Hosted by the Games for Culture Cluster (GCC)—a collective of seven EU-funded projects—the session brought together people who believe games can do more than entertain. Games can teach. They can connect. They can even shift policy.
What Made This Workshop Stand Out?
First, the diversity. We heard from indie game studios, universities, media literacy hubs, cultural innovators, and national game associations. Each speaker brought a different angle—but all were wrestling with the same challenge: How do we make meaningful games that matter to real people in real contexts?
Some standout moments:
- Thomas Vigild kicked things off with a no-nonsense call to arms: ‘Collaborate or Die!’ Drawing on years of experience in cross-curricular game education, he shared 9 hard-won lessons on what works—and what doesn’t—when research and education try to play together.
- Lukas Kolek introduced ‘We Grew Up in War’, a raw, beautiful game exploring war-affected childhoods. It’s not just a game—it’s a conversation starter. A way to process trauma. A different kind of history lesson.
- We at the GREAT project jumped in to share how games can be turned into platforms for climate engagement. From embedded surveys in commercial games to interactive dilemmas in Waterwise, Green Jobs, Urban Rooftops, and Prosper, we’re testing how games can reach the public where they already are—on their phones, in their downtime—and spark action on urgent global issues.
- Then came EPIC-WE, a project building cultural innovation hubs across Europe. Kim Holflod gave us a peek at what happens when artists, academics, and citizens co-create playful futures together.
- The team from Creative Hub GR brought fresh energy from Greece, showing how XR, serious games, and media literacy can fuel social innovation. Their motto? Design for inclusion. Play for impact.
- Finally, Martine Spaans gave a lightning-fast tour of the Dutch games industry, reminding us that behind every big idea, there needs to be a structure to support it—networks, funding, and community.
What Did We Learn?
Spoiler: collaboration is messy—but worth it.
If there’s one takeaway from the Play, Learn, Innovate workshop, it’s this: creating games with real-world impact isn’t about coding faster or writing better stories. It’s about working together across wildly different worlds—from universities and indie studios to national museums and public broadcasters.
Of course, collaboration is easier said than done. And our audience didn’t hold back. They asked the tough, necessary questions that so often go unspoken in panel discussions:
- How do you actually make collaboration work between universities, art schools, and cultural institutions? It’s not just about partnering—it’s about navigating clashing timelines, vocabularies, and expectations. No easy answers, but a lot of shared learning.
- What happens when game developers collaborate with museums or public collections? One studio shared how they’re moving from pure entertainment to education and heritage—but that shift takes trust, curiosity, and a willingness to let go of control.
- Where’s the funding coming from—and how do you get it? As always, money matters. We heard how EU projects and public grants help, but also how these collaborations often begin on a shoestring and grow through shared vision.
- How do these partnerships shape the actual games? It’s not just about getting input—it’s about rethinking the creative process. From narrative choices to mechanics, collaboration influences every pixel.
- How do you prove it’s working? Evaluation came up again and again. Can a logic model really capture the impact of play? Maybe—but we need better, more playful tools to measure what matters.
- And who are we designing for when we say ‘youth’? Is that 12-year-olds? 25-year-olds? Students in school? Youth isn’t a fixed group—it’s a moving target, and good design pays attention to that.
These questions didn’t derail the session—they made it. They reminded us that creating meaningful games isn’t just about innovation. It’s about listening, wrestling with complexity, and staying open to unexpected allies.
What’s Next?
This isn’t a one-off. The GCC will publish the workshop outcomes, and projects such as GREAT are releasing toolkits, open datasets, and white papers later this year. The hope? To turn insights into action. To move from panels to prototypes. From workshops to working games.
And if you’re someone who cares about where games are going—whether you’re in a classroom, a lab, a studio, or a town hall—you’re invited.
This isn’t just a workshop recap. It’s a signal: the future of impactful games is collaborative, cross-sector, and already in motion.
Links:
Event page: https://mycreativenetworks.com/events/177504