Some big-name studios are getting together to create all-new games for the charity War Child.
Halo creator 343 Industries and Creative Assembly, developer of Alien: Isolation, are two of the studios already signed up to a six-day game jam that will eventually spawn a charity compilation. Help: Real War is Not a Game is expected to release digitally on the Steam store in March 2016 and will feature a range of games based on specific themes set by War Child, the charity that supports children affected by war.
The move comes 20 years after bands like Oasis and Radiohead appeared on the Help album, also in aid of War Child. The fact that the charity is using video games this time around reflects gaming’s increasingly important role in mainstream culture, and it’s another example of the gaming community coming together to do good.
“The idea came about over a drink,” Miles Jacobson, a member of War Child’s entertainment committee and studio director at Football Manager developer Sports Interactive, told the Guardian. “I was with a couple of people from War Child discussing what we could do music-wise for the 20th anniversary, and looking at the revenues of the last few albums, I threw in the idea of doing a games project instead.”
Jacobson has already signed up Surgeon Simulator creator Bossa Studios and Worms developer Team 17 in addition to 343 Industries and Creative Assembly. He’s hoping to get a total of more than 20 studios involved in the project.
“No child has ever started a war,” said Jacobson. “No child should be affected by war. That is an example of one of the briefs that will be given to the studios and one of the things that War Child [is] trying to get across.”