Life.Love. Game Design Challenge

Preventing Teen Dating Violence through Video Games since 2008

Since 2008, Jennifer Ann's Group has sponsored the Life.Love. Game Design Challenge to challenge video game designers and developers to create video games about teen dating violence and related issues like consent. Our goal is to increase awareness and provide educational information in order to help teens, tweens, and young adults identify and avoid abusive relationships. As of Winter 2024 we have produced over 70 of these small, but impactful, prosocial video games. The annual competition and published games are from our Gaming Against Violence program, recognized as a Top-50 nonprofit in the U.S. (2022) for its innovative approach to violence prevention.

Below are only some of the games produced by Jennifer Ann's Group. Many of the earliest games are no longer supported as they relied on Unity Webplayer or were created for Adobe Flash. We are in the process of revamping the games and moving them to different platforms. We are slowly making the earlier games available to a wider audience. So far we have a new version of Grace's Diary that is available to download for PC/WIN.

Many of our recent games are available at itchio or gamejolt.

Donations are greatly appreciated to help us with our efforts.

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Select games from the Annual Life Love Game Design Challenge


New Contest Launching February 15, 2024: Connectedness Games

2023 MushWhom? (critical thinking)

2023 Figure It Sprout (critical thinking)

2022 UnEarth (resilience, conflict resolution)

2022 One New Message (resilience, coping strategies)

2021 The Big Build Up (power & control) [Not published yet.]

2020 Culture Overlord (media literacy, healthy dating relationships)

2020 Sea of Roses (cultural influences, healthy dating relationships)

2020 A Thousand Cuts (consent, Title IX, campus culture)

2019 Lamplight Hollow (gaslighting)

2019 LED Gaslight (gaslighting)

2018 Citizen Witch (bystander awareness)

2017 Stuck in a Dark Place (consent)

2017 Crossing Boundaries (consent)

2017 How to Blorrble-Blobble (consent)

2017 ADRIFT (consent)

2016 HONEYMOON (healthy dating relationships)

2015 Another Chance (teen dating violence)

2014 The Guardian (teen dating violence)

2013

Love in the Dumpster
by Jean HEHN
Belgium

Note: this is a Flash game and we are slowly converting them so they are available again.

screenshot of Jean HEHN's winning video game



2012 Winning Video Games to Stop Teen Dating Violence

  The first place winner for 2012 is "DatingDangers1.0" from KoKo in Croatia. On the surface, the game is an interactive quiz about dating violence but it becomes quickly apparent that there is something more at play here. As the game evolves from rudimentary quiz to societal critique, the player will be challenged to demonstrate their knowledge of dating violence.

 Experiencing all of the game will require several re-plays to explore the various tracks. Do you know enough about dating violence to win a cookie?

First place winning entry 2012
"DatingDangers1.0" by KoKo

Note: this is a Flash game and we are slowly converting them so they are available again.

screenshot of KoKo's winning entry


2011 Winning Video Games to Stop Teen Dating Violence

  The first place winner for 2011 was Jean HEHN of Another Kind. He lives in Belgium and his winning entry is "Finding Jane." We hope that you enjoy his entry and we would just caution you to remember that this is a game - if you are confronted with an abuser or any dangerous situation in real life make sure that you contact the police! It's always better to be safe than sorry.

For assistance and advice about teen dating violence in the U.S. you can call our friends at the National Dating Abuse Helpline at 1-866-331-9474. They can be reached 24/7 and have both English and Spanish speakers available.

First place winning entry 2011
"Finding Jane" by Jean HEHN of Another Kind

Note: this is a Flash game and we are slowly converting them so they are available again.

screenshot of Jean HEHN of Another Kind's winning entry


2010 Games

First place winning entry 2010
"Grace's Diary" by Hima (New downloadable version of Grace's Diary)

screenshot of Hima's winning entry


2009 Winning Video Games to Stop Teen Dating Violence

First place winning entry 2009
by Jared Sain

Note: this is a Flash game and we are slowly converting them so they are available again.

screenshot of Jared Sain's winning entry


2008 Winning Video Games to Stop Teen Dating Violence

First place winning entry 2008
"Escape Your Boyfriend's Room"

Note: this is a Flash game and we are slowly converting them so they are available again.

Escape Your Boyfriend's Room


Our Judges - Past and Present (not updated in a while)

Leigh Alexander Michele Perryman Beam Ian Bogost Dr. Erica Bowen
Leigh Alexander is news director of Gamasutra, author of the Sexy Videogameland weblog, and writes reviews, features and cultural commentary for a variety of outlets including Variety, Wired, Slate, The Escapist, Kotaku, and Paste Magazine. She has previously served as Kotaku's Associate News Editor and run Worlds in Motion, covering the business of online games, social networks and virtual worlds. She has chaired and consulted on Worlds in Motion's summit at the Game Developers' Conference. Michele Perryman Beam, writing as "Mishka" is the founder of "Mishka's Musings." She is a fashion blogger and personal style consultant who writes about fashion, fitness, and furnishings from the perspective of a mother with young children. In her spare time she volunteers as an advocate working to prevent cancer and dating violence. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky with her two children and family dogs. Dr. Ian Bogost is an award-winning videogame designer and media philosopher. He is Associate Professor at Georgia Tech and Founding Partner at Persuasive Games LLC. He is also the author or co-author of seven books, including Unit Operations, Persuasive Games, Racing the Beam, Newsgames, and the forthcoming How To Do Things with Videogames and Alien Phenomenology. His most recent game, A Slow Year, won the Vanguard and Virtuoso awards at the 2010 Indiecade Festival. Dr. Erica Bowen is a Registered Forensic Psychologist with the Health Professions Council, a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society, and Reader in the Psychology of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) at Coventry University. Dr. Bowen is also the director of the Violence and Interpersonal Aggression (VIA) research group and the academic lead on the EU Daphne funded project "Changing Attitudes to Violence in Adolescence" (CAVA) which has developed "Green Acres High School," a video game used as part of a classroom curriculum to prevent violence in teenage relationships.
Simon Carless Brian Crecente Drew Crecente Danielle DeZao
Simon Carless is an EVP at UBM Tech, overseeing the Game Developers Conferences in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Germany, and China. 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 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. Crecente is married and has one child. He is Jennifer Ann Crecente's uncle. Drew Crecente is founder and executive director of Jennifer Ann's Group. He is also the founder of L.I.V.E., an organization focusing on the impact of IPV (Intimate Partner Violence) on the practice of Law, and speaks about IPV, teen dating violence, and the use of video games for social change. His speaking engagements include the National Youth at Risk Conference, the Global Humanitarian Summit, Games for Health, Games for Health Europe, and GDC conferences. He is Jennifer Ann Crecente's father. Danielle DeZao is founder and president of h<3rt1, an organization working to eliminate dating violence. She has appeared on the ABC series "What Would You Do?" (shown here with John Quinones); participated in discussions about teen dating violence at the White House; and been featured in CosmoGirl for her efforts to prevent teen dating violence.
Jane McGonigal PhD Dr. Elizabeth L. Richeson Ben Sawyer Jo Sharpen

Jane McGonigal, PhD is the New York Times bestselling author of Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World - and the inventor and co-founder of SuperBetter, a game that has helped more than 200,000 players tackle real-life health challenges such as depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and traumatic brain injury.

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. She is Jennifer Ann Crecente's grandmother. Ben Sawyer is the co-founder of Digitalmill, a games consulting firm based in Portland, Maine. He is the co-founder of the Serious Games Initiative, a project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and also co-founder of the Games for Health project which connects health professionals, researchers, and game developers in order to advance the development of health games and game technologies. The Games for Health project receives major funding from the Pioneer Portfolio, an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Jo Sharpen is the 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.
Elin Stebbins Waldal
Elin Stebbins Waldal is a speaker; the award-winning author of Tornado Warning, A Memoir of Teen Dating Violence And Its Effect On A Woman's Life; and the founder of Girls kNOw More, an organization whose mission is to help build confidence in middle-school-age girls. She lives in Southern California with her husband, three children, and their family dog.

These video games are free to play and to share with your friends, family, and students.
However, Jennifer Ann's Group is a non-profit organization and relies on donations from businesses and individuals.
Your donations help us keep doing what we are doing.