The 2025 Games for Change Festival will feature Deepak Chopra and Poonacha Machaiah, CEO of the Chopra Foundation, as its keynote speakers.
Appearing at the 22nd annual edition of social impact gaming and immersive media event, which is hosted by nonprofit Games for Change (G4C), Chopra and Machaiah will discuss intersection of gaming and mental health, their collaboration on upcoming game “Oasis of Quantum Consciousness” for The Sandbox, and the Global Mental Health Task Force.
The 2025 event’s theme is “Designing for Tomorrow” and the festival will feature sessions across three tracks: games and learning, civics and social issues, and health and wellbeing. Discussions will center around game development, mental health research, emerging technologies, storytelling, and purpose-driven design, all inspired by play.
The Games for Change Festival will take place June 26-27 at Parsons School of Design at The New School in New York City.
Other speakers this year will include: Maria Sayans (CEO, ustwo games), Leo Olebe (VP of Global Partnerships, Xbox | Microsoft), Mathias Norvig (CEO, SYBO), Eric Monacelli (Executive Producer, Marvel Games), Deborah Mensah-Bonsu (Social Impact Partner, Supercell), Nicole Smith (Senior Manager, Tech Initiatives & Partnerships, USA for UNHCR), Patricia Noel (Mental Health Policy Manager, Discord), Rachel Kowert (Visiting Researcher, University of Cambridge), Harold Goldberg (President, New York Videogame Critics Circle), Phil Stuart (Executive Creative Director / Founder, PRELOADED), Stanley Pierre-Louis (President & CEO of the Entertainment Software Association) and Nicole Twohig (Director, Marketing and Communications Campaigns, Vibrant Emotional Health/988 Lifeline).
“We look to a theme each year to help guide our open call,” G4C president Susanna Pollack told Variety. “We offer an opportunity for our communities to propose talks and panels and workshops, and then we also curate part of the the event ourselves. And we are internally curating this year — sometimes we work with partners, this time, we’re doing it all ourselves — and our theme this year is ‘Designing for Tomorrow,’ which allows for conversations around how games and immersive media enable borderless collaboration. How games as a platform can break down barriers, whether it’s geographic, generationally, looking at different kinds of perspectives and looking at how we can look ahead to the future and designing the world we want.”
Additional speakers, program details, topic tables and masterclass sessions will be announced soon.
Tickets for the festival are on sale now until June 9.
