i-Game | Building a community for the co-creation of games with high impact on innovation, sustainability, social cohesion and growth

i-Game is an European research project – funded by the European Union within the HORIZON Europe Programme- aiming to create an accessible open-source game development platform that will facilitate the co-creation games by diverse actors, in an inclusive approach by ensuring participation of under-represented groups, within different ecosystems of cultural and creative sectors and industries, to enhance innovation and to bring positive impact on social cohesion and sustainability.
To achieve this, at first the project team will engage with a variety of stakeholders (e.g. experts from cultural organisations, from the game industry, from fashion and textile industry, policy makers, etc.) of different abilities, expertise and disciplines to understand and build-upon their many perspectives, ideas and background for the creation of new solutions and opportunities. Thus the project aims to capture the needs and obstacles for platform users and end-user organisations in order to provide them with techniques, knowledge and skills to engage, motivate, empower, learn, explore and discover new pathways towards innovation.
i-Game will also design and implement a collaborative platform equipped with the necessary digital tools that allow users to more easily co-create mobile and virtual reality games, by forging closer collaboration between game industry, culture/museum and fashion & textile sectors. Beside the digital tools that will support users to manage their projects and communicate, some advanced tools, based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), will also be integrated. This includes for example: (i) tools that can create new content and ideas, including stories, images, video, or music, the so called Generative Artificial Intelligence (generative AI); (ii) tools (e.g. reusable game AI components) to make smarter and more realistic and intuitive games (e.g. non-player character modelling, game balance, etc.); and (iii) tools that can explain and make it easier for the users to understand how the used AI models work and why they gave the particular result during the game design, the so called Explainable AI.
And last, the project also targets to understand why and how are online games positively impacting people, culture and society, and which are the necessary ingredients for developing a new generation of games targeted to improve people’s well-being.
11 partners from 8 countries work together, following an interdisciplinary approach (inclusive and motivational design, AI, social impact lifecycle), to co-develop a collaborative platform for the creation of games, which will be piloted in 3 different CCSI ecosystems.