Games Can Be Positive in Ways You Can't See | Games for Change 2026
Mats Steen spent most of his short life indoors in Oslo. To his parents he looked like a young man with no one. When he died, hundreds of people reached out to say they had known him for years, inside World of Warcraft, as a character named…
Mats Steen spent most of his short life indoors in Oslo. To his parents he looked like a young man with no one. When he died, hundreds of people reached out to say they had known him for years, inside World of Warcraft, as a character named Ibelin. His parents had no idea.
That story sits at the center of this episode, and so does the question underneath it: how much of what games actually do is invisible to the people measuring them?
Recorded on a rooftop in New York at Games for Change 2026, this episode brings together three people running the organization. Susanna Pollack on twenty-plus years of arguing that games carry purpose beyond entertainment. Then Dr. Rachel Kowert and Arana Shapiro on brand-new research that says the panic about kids and gaming is not coming from the evidence.
Guests
Susanna Pollack, President, Games for Change
Dr. Rachel Kowert, Research Director, Games for Change
Arana Shapiro, Chief Program/Operating Officer, Games for Change
Interviews by Lewis Ward.
Chapters
00:00:00 Cold open: the story of Mats Steen
00:00:42 Games for Change 2026
00:04:38 Susanna Pollack, and this year's awards
00:06:30 What Games for Change actually is
00:09:05 Rebuilding the festival: workshops and the Playtest Lab
00:12:23 The argument the industry keeps failing to make
00:14:37 Games are one of the few places failing is fine
00:15:41 The education spine, and kids in 92 countries
00:18:25 Raising Good Gamers: the 2019 origin
00:22:11 Going global, and working with the UN
00:27:54 What's coming next
00:28:57 Dr. Rachel Kowert and Arana Shapiro
00:30:00 The white paper, and 200,000 articles
00:31:43 Why bad news about games travels further
00:32:52 Stop counting hours, start asking why
00:33:55 Most media is passive. Games are not.
00:35:17 SPACE: the five moves
00:36:25 60% of kids want their parents to play
00:36:57 What Raising Good Gamers ships
00:41:53 Self-determination theory and the Proteus effect
00:43:41 Academy, Intel, and the Discord
What you'll take away
There is more positive coverage of games than negative. The negative just gets shared further, which leaves parents inside what Dr. Kowert calls a biased information ecosystem.
A game does not need to be designed for impact to have it. Joy, stress relief, connection, and a space where age, gender and location stop deciding anything.
Games are one of very few activities where failing is acceptable and repeatable. That is how mastering a system quietly builds resilience.
The parental concerns have not changed in fifty years. What changes is the question: not how many hours, but what purpose the play is serving.
SPACE, the framework: Start with curiosity. Play together. Adjust for context. Cultivate digital citizenship. Establish boundaries together.
60% of kids want their parents to play with them. What stops most parents is assuming they'll be bad at it.
Mentioned in this episode
Raising Good Gamers, and the white paper by Dr. Rachel Kowert. Free, along with a conversation guide and a family gaming code of conduct template. Workshops rolling out through the PTA, Boys and Girls Club, and libraries.
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin , the Netflix documentary about Mats Steen. A feature film is in development.
The Games for Change Student Challenge, 10+ years, participants from 92 countries.
2026 award winners: South of Midnight (Compulsion Games), the Vanguard Award to Jenn Panattoni, and the Giving Award to SpecialEffect for their adaptive controller work.
The Proteus effect, first described by Nick Yee, who joined us back in February.
Katie Salen, professor of informatics at UC Irvine, co-creator of Raising Good Gamers.
Disclosure: the FTI Consulting media analysis underpinning the white paper was commissioned by Tencent.
Where to go next
Academy — free, built in short packs you can finish on a commute. academy.playerdriven.io
Intel — our prediction game. Call what the industry does next and see if you were right. intel.playerdriven.io
Discord — where this conversation actually continues.
The Operator's Briefing — Tuesdays, if you'd rather it come to you.
Get the Tuesday briefing.
Three things every Tuesday: the week's best essay, the next live drop, and one thing we're still arguing about internally.
Ready for more? Join the Discord community or see the Academy.
