Jennifer Estaris

For a long time, the games industry struggled to name the value of play beyond entertainment. But designers were already using play to explore empathy, identity, learning, and meaning - our institutions just lagged behind. In the early 2010s, while serving on the BAFTA Games Committee, I helped introduce the Games Beyond Entertainment category - not to a define a new genre of game, but to acknowledge what was already out there. The inaugural award went to Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice - a moment that felt less like a win, and more like a line being drawn. A signal that play could hold emotional weight, invite difficult conversations, and still belong at the heart of the medium. Huge congratulations to this year's category winners - Julián Cordero and Sebastian Valbuena - for Despolote, a truly beautiful game about an 8-year-old, his home and football. The Games Industry needs more of this. Everyone go play!

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How can video games influence the way people think about the climate? In this week's VGIM, supported by Fifty, we headed to the Green Games Summit to find out how from Brunswick Group, More in Common UK and The Game Bakers. https://lnkd.in/eNktRdHX

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In the latest GGJ Podcast episode, we follow Lual Mayen's journey from a refugee camp to founding Junub Games, creating experiences that center peace, conflict transformation, and the power of play to heal. He shares what it means to design from lived experience, why representation in game development matters, and how games can carry oral histories across borders and generations. If you believe games can be a force for empathy and meaningful change, this episode is for you. https://lnkd.in/gb27cY5u

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Celebrating the Skills Challenge 2026 runner-up teams, building games with bold ideas, powerful storytelling, and impact-driven innovation. 🥈 🌱 Beginner Track Runner-Up: Seeds of Tomorrow (Switzerland) Planting the seeds for a greener future through thoughtful, sustainability-led gameplay. Play the game here: https://buff.ly/7mYi5vd ♻️🌊 Advanced Track Runner-Up: Mission Island Rescue (Malaysia) Bringing environmental action to life through engaging, purpose-driven design. Play the game here: https://buff.ly/AfGBzMB These teams created experiences that inspire action and push the boundaries of what games can achieve.🎮🌍 A huge thank you to our sponsors Zoom, with support from Arizona State University Next Lab, University of Exeter, Ludex AI, and Unity, for making this global platform for impact possible. Learn more about Skills Challenge 2027: https://buff.ly/auhapxH Azwa Al Islam BHMS Business & Hotel Management School Asia Pacific University of Technology and Innovation (APU / APIIT)

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As the world’s leaders prepare to gather in Brazil for COP30, the games industry took its own stand for the planet this week at Playing for the Planet’s Green Games Summit and Awards. This confluence highlights that while politics may change, science does not: the (still) inconvenient truth is that the planet is heating up – and it’s up to us all to work to cool it down through collaboration. https://lnkd.in/ewD7hAf2

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Digital leadership in games report inadequate institutional support. Most rate current company-provided training (74%) and third-party resources (60%) as insufficient. Despite this, nearly all digital leaders (96%) independently seek professional development. I'm proud to say we are now building these resources. WATCH THIS SPACE. ...in the meantime, you can learn more here: Understanding The Needs Of Video Game Digital Communities — Shine A Light Gaming https://lnkd.in/ghb4Rhza

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The scale of games is a huge untapped opportunity for positive impact. I joined Climate One to talk about how we’re turning player engagement into real-world action at TreesPlease Games. Thanks for having me on the show - such a great conversation! Listen here 👇 https://lnkd.in/eRT6ft3E

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Attention game developers at Games for Change this week: come talk to me about making gaming spaces safer! ➡️ Topic Table | Keep Calm and Mod On: Empowering Community Moderators 📆 Jul 21, 2026, 01:00 PM - 01:45 PM 📍 Workshop Room I'll be chatting about some of the work Rachel Kowert and I have put on for Christchurch Call Foundation focusing on training for community moderators for gaming spaces. Here's a peek at the handout we created for game developers! #G4C2026 #seriousgames

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I hosted last week's Green Games Summit on behalf of Playing for the Planet. I left with thoughts about how games can influence both the climate conversation and our political discourse. Three micro-talks shaped my thinking: 🗣️ Wolfgang Blau made a powerful argument that games can play a role in tackling climate misinformation. Whether it is accurately representing energy systems in games (e.g. let's run over heat pumps in Grand Theft Auto VI) or challenging misinformed language about the climate, Blau thinks that game makers can tell stories capable of capturing the imagination through the ages. 🌳 The conversation around the climate crisis is becoming increasingly polarised, even as concern rises (and falls) with the mercury. But Andrew Fowler at More in Common believes that reframing the climate crisis around action to support nature could close the divide, with "the Attenborough effect" uniting the British public on the topic. 🏔️ And Alice Ourliac of The Game Bakers demonstrated how game developers can embed nature into their games in ways that motivate real-world action, showing how Cairn – the company's hit mountain climbing game – reconnected players to nature through subtle rewards for doing things like picking up your litter during the ascent to the peak. When people discuss the way games influence the world, there's too much of a tendency to focus on the impact of content alone. As the Green Games Summit showed, the true power of games is found in the communities they build. Shaping the language, norms and culture of those groups, who often sit right in the middle of the digital discourse shaping wider society, can therefore have a powerful impact on the world at large.

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