June 5 - 20, 2016

All eligible entries distributed to the judges with scoring due back by June 20th. The judges are experts in game design and in teen dating violence.

Judges Bios

• Dan Butchko
  • CEO & Co-Founder, Game Developer
  • Dan Butchko oversees all operations for Playcrafting globally and carries out planning and execution of all New York activities. Through Playcrafting, Dan and his team work to empower and grow game development communities through events and education that cater to veteran and aspiring developers alike. He aims to help gamers and enthusiasts become developers and active developers become successful businesses.
• Simon Carless
  • Publisher, Game Designer
  • Simon Carless is an EVP at UBM Tech, overseeing the Game Developers Conferences in San Francisco and Germany. He also oversees the double Webby award-winning Gamasutra website, and the Black Hat information security conferences. He has previously worked as a lead game designer at Kuju Entertainment, Eidos Interactive and Atari.

• Brian Crecente
  • Journalist
  • Brian Crecente is a journalist and columnist, a founding editor and the News Editor for Polygon, he also writes Good Game, a weekly column internationally syndicated by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. Crecente was named one of the 20 most influential people in the video game industry over the past 20 years by GamePro in 2009 and one of gaming's Top 50 journalists by Edge in 2006. He was featured in a 5280 biography. He has spoken at the Smithsonian, GDC, PAX and UCLA.
• Drew Crecente, JD
  • Executive Director
  • Drew Crecente is founder and executive director of Jennifer Ann's Group. He is also a member of the Council of Europe's Game Over Hate initiative and the [re]gamed Campaign. Drew speaks about IPV, teen dating violence, and the use of video games for social change. His speaking engagements include GDC, the National Youth at Risk Conference, SIEGE, Games for Health, and Games for Health Europe conferences. Drew has also presented at the CDC and written for the Games for Health Journal.
• Nina Freeman
  • Award Winning Designer
  • Nina Freeman is a level designer at Fullbright in Portland, Oregon. She is working on their current game, Tacoma. In her personal work, she is most often making vignette games based on her own life stories. She worked as a designer on IGF nominee "how do you Do It?" and IGF Student Honorable Mention "Ladylike." She designed the recently released "Cibele," a game about an online relationship created by Star Maid Games. You can find her work at ninasays.so, and you can follow her on Twitter at @hentaiphd.
• Ruud Jacobs
  • Researcher
  • Ruud Jacobs is a PhD candidate at the Erasmus Research Centre for Media, Communication and Culture at the Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. His work focuses on the impacts of persuasive games and the psychological mechanisms for their effects. He is part of the project Persuasive Gaming in Context that looks at persuasive games through three interdisciplinary focal points: theories of persuasiveness, design principles, and validation. Aside from his research, Ruud lectures in ethics and quantitative methods and also manages the research centre's digital research lab.
• David Langendoen
  • CEO, Game Designer
  • David Langendoen is the president of Electric Funstuff (EFS), a NY-based design and development company founded in 1998 that specializes in applying motivational principles from the computer game world to the realm of educational software. EFS has designed and developed games across a range of subjects including reading comprehension, math, history, and financial literacy. Its signature program is the Mission US series of American history games, currently used by over 50,000 middle school teachers and their classes.
• Dr. Jon Preston
  • Professor
  • Dr. Preston serves as the Faculty Executive Assistant to the President at Kennesaw State University. He was previously the coordinator for the Center of Applied Gaming and Media Arts (CAGMA) and coordinator of the Computer Game Design and Development degree and Associate Professor at Kennesaw State University (previously Southern Polytechnic State University). He has authored over 40 papers and is particularly interested in game simulation, social space development, and the use of these technologies to improve learning. Dr. Preston has been teaching computing for nearly 20 years and has taught game development over the past 8 years including mobile, casual, and serious game development. In the past 5 years, he has hosted many game jam weekends totaling over 200 games developed by more than 1,000 participants. Dr. Preston also serves on the Academic Committee of the Georgia Game Developers Association; is the College Fair Coordinator for the Southeastern Interactive Entertainment and Games Expo; and participates on the Entertainment Engineering Subcommittee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
• Debbie Rawlings
  • Director of Operations
  • Debbie Rawlings is the Director of Operations for Auroch Digital, an indie development studio and games consultancy. She is also Co-founder and the previous Director of Bristol Games Hub, set up to support and grow Bristol and the South West's games dev community. She is Creative Producer of games events and recently produced the Green Capital Digital Challenge, a competition for the best game/app around 5 environmental challenge areas, as part of Bristol's European Green Capital year of events. Debbie was included in the MCV Brit List: Women in Games Top 100 for 2015.
• Dr. Tomas Rawlings
  • Award Winning Game Designer, Producer
  • Dr. Tomas Rawlings is Design & Production Director at Auroch Digital and its acclaimed news-gaming initiative GameTheNews.net which produced the global talking-point, Endgame:Syria. He is an award winning and experienced games designer. He has created games from original titles to well-loved IP such as Games Workshop’s Chainsaw Warrior, Star Wars:The Battle for Hoth and the multiple award winning Call of Cthulhu:The Wasted Land. He is a well known speaker on video games and also a consultant who has worked with major organisations such as the Wellcome Trust, the Royal Society, UK Parliament and the BBC. He has a doctorate from the University of the West of England in Software Studies. He also blogs at agreatbecoming.com, is a co-founder of the non-profit Bristol Games Hub and is named in Bristol’s Arts & Culture Power List.
• Dr. Elizabeth L. Richeson
  • Psychologist
  • Dr. Elizabeth L. Richeson is a Psychologist in El Paso, Texas, the head of the Advisory Board for Jennifer Ann's Group, and former president of the Texas Psychological Foundation. She is an expert on teen dating violence, appears regularly on news and talk shows, and lectures nationwide on a variety of issues related to teenagers, young adults, and relationships.
• Jo Sharpen
  • Domestic Abuse Specialist
  • Jo Sharpen is the policy manager of the Children and Young People's Project at AVA (Against Violence and Abuse) in the U.K. and wrote the national U.K. toolkit on children, young people and domestic violence for practitioners, Improving Safety, Reducing Harm, published by the Department of Health in 2009. She has also written numerous policy briefings, guidance and training packages on violence against women and girls; currently she is writing a book on domestic violence in teenage relationships.