2025 Game for Change Festival 

The Festival Game for Change will be held on June 26 and 27 at Parsons School of Design at The New School. This year’s theme is Designing for Tomorrow.  

Game for Change Festival aims to:  

Organise Impactful Talks & Workshops: Engage with industry leaders in thought-provoking sessions and workshops that explore the future of social impact gaming and XR. 

Attribute the Games for Change Awards: Experience the best social impact games and XR experiences of the year, highlighting creativity, innovation, and powerful storytelling. 

Increase networking & Community Building: Forge new connections and collaborations with a diverse global community of game developers, educators, and social innovators. 

This year, two French projects are selected in official competition:  

Art Leap by Belvedere Museum in the category of Best Platform-based Project:

Art Leap, developed by Exclusible for the Roblox platform, invites young audiences to explore masterpieces like The Kiss by Klimt from the Belvedere Museum collection in Vienna through interactive storytelling. Blending art history with playful gameplay, the project offers an accessible and engaging way to experience cultural heritage. Accessible to the digital generation, Art Leap leverages the immersive potential of Roblox to stimulate curiosity through virtual adventure. It’s a new way of making a museum visit playful. 

Impulse: Playing With Reality in the category of Best in XR 

Impulse: Playing With Reality, created by UK-based studio Anagram and available on Meta Quest 3 and 3s, is a 40-minute mixed reality documentary that immerses users in the lived experience of ADHD. Narrated by Tilda Swinton, the experience follows the personal journeys of four individuals navigating their relationship with attention and perception. Combining immersive storytelling with spatial computing, Impulse powerfully demonstrates how new media can convey complex mental health narratives with empathy, nuance, and impact. 

Impulse: Playing With Reality was also part of the program French Immersion Exhibition Grant and was exhibited at Parsons School of Design in New York City and at Arizona State University in Los Angeles. 

With two French-led projects in competition, this year’s Game for Change Festival reaffirms France’s rising role in shaping the future of meaningful gaming and XR storytelling.