Foundation celebrated the winners’ achievement during a virtual live event
LOS ANGELES—Today, XPRIZE – the world’s leader in designing and operating incentive competitions to solve humanity’s grand challenges – announced the winners of XPRIZE Connect Code Games: A Global Game-Making Challenge, a game design challenge that aimed to capture the hearts, minds and imaginations of young people across the globe.
The challenge, in partnership with E-Line Media and supported by Endless Network, awarded multiple $1,000 USD cash prizes to winners who designed and developed an original video game with a variety of freely available creation tools, as well as written game designs. Additional grand prizes of $2,000 USD were awarded to the best games in the following topic areas: equity, exploration, and environment. A total of $25,000 USD was distributed amongst the 16 winners at the virtual Code Games Challenge Winners Celebration.
“In a time when innovation and creativity is needed more than ever to reimagine the future, I am proud to announce the next-generation winners of our Code Games challenge,” said Anousheh Ansari, CEO of XPRIZE. “This challenge is a testament to the skill, ingenuity and vision of the younger generation of innovators who will be integral in building the hopeful and abundant society we all want to live in.”
Code Games is the first challenge launched by XPRIZE Connect, a learning initiative that is democratizing access to learning through technology, allowing a new generation of innovators to follow their interests and develop needed skills for the oncoming, fully digital world. By incorporating inspiration and creativity from the next generation, these new games will allow young creators to hone critical skills in coding and game design to shape the technology in their world, rather than be shaped by it.
"There are incredibly talented kids all over the world eager to level up from game player to game maker and we’re excited to partner with Endless and XPRIZE to help empower and celebrate these inspired young creators," said Alan Gershenfeld, President of E-Line Media.
XPRIZE chose the 16 winners from seven countries, dividing the winning games by which best acknowledged the exploration, environment and human equity areas. You can access the games here. See below for the full list of senior and junior division winners:
SENIOR DIVISION
Best in Class -- The Endless Mission
- David Turner, Male, United States
Best in Class -- Gamestar Mechanic
- Gyven Liddell, Male, United States
Best in Class -- Open Platform
- Matthew Zhu, Male, United States
Best in Class -- Scratch
- John Anthony Luna, Male, Saudi Arabia
Best in Class -- Unity
- Noah Do Rego, Male, Canada
Best in Class -- Written Game Design Document
- Carinn Gaspar, Female, New Zealand
Best in Class -- Playable Game, Environment Theme
- Felicia Yan, Female, United States
Best in Class -- Playable Game, Exploration Theme
- Matthew Zhu, Male, United States
Best in Class -- Written Game Design Document, Environment Theme
- Batool Ali Akbar, Female, Pakistan
Best in Class -- Written Game Design Document, Exploration Theme
- Carinn Gaspar, Female, New Zealand
JUNIOR DIVISION
Best in Class -- Gamestar Mechanic
- Sadnan Pranto, Male, United States
Best in Class -- Open Platform
- Brydan Cotichini, Male, Canada
Best in Class -- Open Platform, Teams (2 winners on a team for the same submission)
- Kayla Villanueva De Raeve, Female, Mexico
- Alyssa Villanueva De Raeve, Female, Mexico
Best in Class -- Scratch (two separate co-winning individual submissions)
- Dominic Darby, Male, Jamaica
- Erica Liu, Female, United States
Best in Class -- Unity
- John Xu, Male, United States
Best in Class -- Playable Game, Environment Theme
- Ezra Cotton, Male, United States
Best in Class -- Playable Game, Exploration Theme
- John Xu, Male, United States
The competition was judged by a panel of 12 experts. You can find out more about the Judges here.
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XPRIZE
XPRIZE designs and operates multi-million-dollar, global competitions to accelerate the development of technological breakthroughs that benefit humanity. Active competitions include the $100 Million XPRIZE Carbon Removal, $10 Million ANA Avatar XPRIZE and the $5 Million IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, the $20 Million NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, the $5M XPRIZE Rapid Reskilling, and the $10 Million Rainforest XPRIZE. For more information, visit xprize.org.
E-Line Media
E-Line Media is a video game developer and publisher passionate about harnessing the power of games to help players understand and shape the world. The company is a double-bottom-line, for-profit enterprise whose investors seek market-level financial returns and positive social impact. Learn more at www.elinemedia.com.
Endless Network
Founded in 2011, the Endless Network is an independent collection of companies and initiatives focused on improving technological literacy, expanding internet access, and promoting coding education. By leveraging philanthropic efforts, partnerships, and impact gaming, the Endless Network seeks to meet the technology needs of underserved and unconnected communities while making learning fun and safe for all. Learn more at www.endlessnetwork.com.