The Games Industry Reacts: Should we be doing more to solve real world issues?
Have your say: The World Economic Forum called on Pokémon Go and virtual reality to raise awareness of its goals, but is there more developers and publishers could be doing?
Video games are still by and large entertainment products, but like any art form they can be used to convey so much more.
Anyone who has even sampled That Dragon, Cancer knows how powerful this medium is in drawing the player into someone else's situation or story, and over the years various organisations have attempted to use this power to achieve more than user exhilaration.
This week, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland partnered with Niantic to create new Pokémon Go stops and a gym designed to raise public awareness of not only the event but also its 17 goals, which include ending poverty and hunger, fighting gender inequality, climate change, improving education and more.
During the same event, HTC Vive announced a $10m fund for virtual reality projects that promote these goals and express to people how they might be achieved.
Personally, I believe any such initiative can only be a good thing, not only for the causes tapping into the unique relationship between video games and their players but also to emphasis our industry goes beyond being the perceived providers of violent shooters or money-draining freemium titles.
But as always, the opinion we most want to know is yours. So for this week's Games Industry Reacts, we're asking readers and industry members the following:
Should the games industry be doing more to solve, or at least raise awareness of, real world issues?
You can have your say by commenting below, tweeting @GIBiz, or emailing james.batchelor@gamesindustry.biz. We'll be publishing the most interesting views later on.