10 years of Games and Social Impact
Francesco Cavallari recounts the decade-long journey of Video Games Without Borders.
Every time I think about Video Games Without Borders I’m amazed: a simple idea has become an international community, small projects have generated a huge impact worldwide and a professional career has become a personal jouney during which in I’ve met great people and learned a lot from them.
Thank you to all the people who supported us, collaborated on our projects or simply played our games during our first 10 years! Yes, VGWB turns 10 years old… and I have decided to recount everything we have achieved together, year by year.
I really hope you enjoy reading it and that we all will be here in 10 years, still sharing our passion for video games and social impact.
2015 - From a joke to a vision
Everything started with a joke. Miriam, my partner in life, was organizing a mission to Africa with Clowns Without Borders so I joked: “If you are going with Clowns Without Borders I’ll go with Video Games Without Borders!”. Hearing my voice was inspiring and Video Game Without Borders became a reality on the 22nd of February of 2015, a couple of weeks before leaving for Burkina Faso.
During a 6-month stay in Burkina Faso, we tried to develop an interactive tale (The Stinky Lions) with local talents but the project has never been completed. We also collaborated with the local Computer Science university experimenting with a training program in video game development (Play Lab).
During fall, once back in Europe, we formalized the vision and the first people started joining the VGWB Community.
2016 - Antura was born
In January 2016, recognizing the scarcity of literacy programs for the estimated 2.5 million displaced Syrian children whose education had been disrupted by years of conflict, a Norway-led coalition launched the EduApp4Syria call for innovation with a total budget of 1.7 million dollars.
We joined forces with Cologne Game Lab (part of a German public university) and Wixel Studios (a Lebanese game development studio) and applied to the competition with the concept for Antura and the Letters. A few weeks later, our concept was founded in the first round and we could start the development of what will become our flagship game. By the end of the year, we had a playable Alpha version and Antura and the Letters was selected as a finalist of the EduApp4Syria call for innovation.
2017 - And the winner is…
In March, at UNESCO Mobile Learning Week, Antura and the Letters was announced as winner of the EduApp4Syria call for innovation and its Beta version was field tested in Azraq refugee camp (Jordan) during the summer. Later, an independent impact evaluation was published showing its positive effect both on literacy level and psychosocial wellbeing of the refugee children.
Throughout the year, Video Games Without Borders was selected by two of the best acceleration programs focused on social impact in Spain: B-Value and BBVA Momentum.
In December, Antura and the Letters received the first award of its long list: Best Serious Game of the Year at the Fun & Serious Games Festival in Bilbao.
2018 - Antura goes to America
After improving the game to address all the recommendations from the field testing, the first official version of Antura and the Letters was published on Apple App Store and Google Play Store and all its code/assets were released under open source/creative commons licenses.
The game reached 100.000 downloads before the end of 2018, being presented at conferences all around the world and receiving several international awards.
In the meantime, we secured the funding for the first expansion of the game: a contract by Plan Ceibal (Uruguay’s digital technology center for education innovation at the service of public education policies) to adapt the original learn-to-read in Arabic game to learn English as a foreign language.
2019 - More and more Antura games Antura grows up
We received support from Facebook to run a promotion campaign in areas with high density of refugees, allowing Antura and the Letters to pass the 250.000 downloads mark.
A special version of the game with instructions in Moroccan Arabic, Antura et les Lettres (de la Darija à l’Arabe), was developed in collaboration with the Fondation Touria et Abdelaziz Tazi from Casablanca.
The brand new game Learn English with Antura was released worldwide apart from being distributed to all public school students in Uruguay.
We also adapted the original Arabic game Antura and the Letters in order to be used by ProFuturo as part of their digital learning solution in Lebanon.
Finally, in December, we received UNHCR’s NGO Innovation Award in Geneva with a small funding that allowed to kick off the adaptation of Antura to help Afghan children learning to read in the main local languages (Dari and Pashto), developed in collaboration with Code to Inspire and Partnership Afghanistan Canada,
2020 - The year of the pandemic
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we launched Flatten Island, a game designed to promote health awareness and support initiatives combating the virus. This project, developed in a few weeks only with volunteers from our community, demonstrated the organization's adaptability in addressing current global challenges through gaming.
Building on the experience from the previous year, we developed and released Learn French with Antura in collaboration with the Institut Français of Morocco, with the goal of helping local kids attending school in French. After that, all Antura projects were put on standby for a few months for the lack of funding opportunities because of the pandemic.
Towards the end of the year we kicked-off IEEDO (Increasing and Enhancing Effective Digital Opportunities for refugees and migrants), our first 3-year long EU Erasmus+ project in collaboration with several European partners.
2021 - Helping Afghan families under Talibans’ ruling
The early phases of the IEEDO project consisted in researching the needs of refugees settling into a new country and the organizations helping them. Once the research was completed we started with the design and the development of the digital solution, a gamified personal assistant for the migrants and an online training module for the social workers tutoring them during the process.
The summer of 2021 was marked by the return to power of Talibans in Afghanistan. Ubisoft, one of the largest video game publishers in the world, decided to take action providing financial support for Antura for Afghanistan. This way we were able to resume the adaptation of Antura to help Afghan children learn to read in the main local languages (Dari and Pashto).
We also collaborated with Ubisoft in the localization of their game Rabbids Coding to Dari (Persian) language.
2022 - Antura for Ukraine
In February, while we were working on Antura for Afghanistan, the Russian invasion of Ukraine started and millions of Ukrainian families (mainly women and children) fled the country. In a few weeks, more than 5 million Ukrainian refugees were registered in the neighbouring European countries, all of them facing a major language barrier! In collaboration with our long-term partner Cologne Game Lab, we decided to act and expand the Antura project to help Ukrainian kids, in this case to learn the local language. Building on Learn English with Antura and Learn French with Antura, we decided to adapt the game to teach also Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, German, Italian and Spanish.
Facing the risk of having too many Antura apps on the stores, we decided to reorganize the whole project and merge all the learning content into a single app that offers both learn-to-read and learn-a-language curriculums in several languages. At the beginning of the summer we released Antura and the Letters 2.0 with the new system and a few languages, then we added more and more languages during the following weeks. A new communication campaign targeting Ukrainian families was launched with the Cologne Game Lab and the game reached 300.000 downloads. Finally, at the German Developer Award 2022 in December, Antura and the Letters received the Special Award for Social Commitment.
In the meantime and throughout all year, using an iterative approach, alternating development and user testing, we released several versions of the IEEDO mobile app. At the same time, together with our partners, we produced and translated all the content for the online training module for the social workers.
2023 - A new wave of projects
The year 2023 marked the end of the IEEDO project with the dissemination of its results and the beginning of a new EU Erasmus+ project, ANTURA (interactive learning game for refugee and migrANT children's inclUsion and integRAtion). In a few words, the new project has been designed to support migrant and refugee children in learning the language of their host country and better integrating themselves into their new environments by improving the existing Antura and the Letters learn-a-language modules and by creating a new module to discover the local culture.
In spring, we released Voy a La Noria, a puzzle game that explains the work carried out by the Center for Social Innovation La Noria in the province of Malaga. In the game, players are challenged to achieve the maximum social impact in the province, placing a variety of real projects so that they carry out their work optimally and have the greatest possible impact in the territory.
Finally, 2023 has also seen the kick-off of the collaboration on Hexplorando, a cozy 3D puzzle game for PC/Windows that allows the player to discover the landscape and cultural heritage of Europe. Contrary to all other projects, this is a commercial game that will be available on Steam: VGWB supports the development and the promotion of the game in exchange for the rights of using its games system and assets for its own educational and cultural projects. Hexplorando received a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Culture to support the development, a special mention at AEVI Innovation Grants and it was part of Vortex’s Official Selection, before presenting its first playable demo at the BIG Conference in Bilbao.
2024 - Our first international conference
Hexplorando has been growing throughout the year presenting a Demo of the Puzzle Mode at Guadalindie (Malaga) in May and a Demo of the Sandbox Mode at IndieDevDay (Barcelona) in September. The project has also started looking for additional funding both for the commercial game and for its educational/cultural versions.
In 2024 we organized our first major event, the International Conference on Videogames and Social Impact (CIVIS). On November 18-19, Malaga hosted a 2-day conference around 4 thematic tracks with dozens of international speakers, networking sessions and an exposition of games with social impact. The conference was organized with the support of the Spanish Ministry of Culture and in collaboration with several local and international partners.
Moreover, in collaboration with MálagaJam and with the sponsorship of the Diputación de Málaga, through the Centro de Innovación Social La Noria, and Fundación La Caixa, we organized CIVIS GAME JAM: a game jam about impact video games that uses Human Rights and the Sustainable Development Goals as a thematic frame of reference. All 18 games created during the game jam were demoed at the CIVIS conference.
The development of the ANTURA European project started after a deep phase of research on the target audience, their habits and their needs. A first playable prototype of the new module was playtested in France with dozens of children and its concept has been validated, preparing the production pipeline for the development of the full module that will be tested both in France and Poland in 2025. In the meantime, Antura and the Letters passed the 400.000 downloads mark.
2025 and beyond…
Stay tuned for many more impactful projects to come!