MTV Fights HIV/AIDS With Gaming
MTV, through its university-specific cable channel mtvU, has partnered up with non-profit healthcare juggernaut the Kaiser Family Foundation,to hold a game-designing competition which hopes to help reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS among young Americans. The joint effort, called "Change the Course of HIV Challenge," will inspire a range of artists, activists, gaming enthusiasts and burgeoning developers to propose ideas for a web-based game that will not only help raise awareness about HIV/AIDS among gamers aged 15-24, but presumably be fun to play, as well.
The challenge is open exclusively to college students across the states (I'm unsure if they include all of North America or not), and its deadline is March 16, 2007. The winner (or winning team) gets to work with Kaiser and mtvU to make the winning proposal a winning reality.
So all you young bucks out there, you frosh and you seniors and you seventh-year-juniors, you eligible bastards who get to enter this competition: do it. If you've got an idea, where better to make your mark? As gay gamers we've got huge life-long investments in the amelioration of the entrenched battle against the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and on a less critical level in the maturation of gaming as both an art form and political medium.
Meanwhile, those of us too ancient to enter but who were nevertheless raised, babysat, and occasionally breast-fed by MTV (thanks but no thanks, Tawny Kitaen), will bite our pillows in acid-green envy.
Make me proud, my perfect young geniuses!
mtvU, Kaiser Partner For HIV Awareness Competition [Gamasutra]
tiny dancer
Posted to Hot Stuff, Miscellany, Video Games on 25 January 2007
· Comments (1)
Other stuff like this: aids, change the course of hiv challenge, hiv, hiv/aids, kaiser, mtv, mtvu
Beautiful post Tiny. This would be a wonderful exercise in socially responsible video games. AIDS and HIV have devistated the world, and is not getting the media attention it used to afford. I hope through the efforts of the Kaiser Family Foundation and MTV, it will raise social awareness and help prevent the spread of this deadly disease.