Brazil's Mother Gaia Studios is the winner of Microsoft's Imagine Cup, a competition that challenged students from around the world to use XNA community tools to build games around the theme of environmental sustainability.

Microsoft recently showcased the finalists at the 2008 Games For Change event in New York, and Mother Gaia took home the Game Development prize with City Rain, the company announced today. Australia's Team SOAK won the Worldwide Software Design invitational, and Singapore's Team Trail Blazers won the Embedded Development invitational.

Said Microsoft:

A total of 370 students from 124 teams representing 61 countries and regions competed in the worldwide Imagine Cup finals in nine categories: Software Design, Embedded Development, Game Development, "Project Hoshimi" (Programming Battle), IT Challenge, Algorithm, Photography, Short Film and Interface Design. The student teams were asked to undertake a series of challenges relating to digital media or technology depending on the invitational.

Full announcement and details on the winners after the jump!

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Alarmingly, American teenagers are far more educated about entertainment media and pop culture than they are about their own government. For example, 59 percent of teens can name the Three Stooges, but only 41 percent can name the three branches of the U.S. government. 94 percent of teens know that Will Smith is the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air - but only 2.2 percent can name the current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

At the closing keynote yesterday for the Games For Change event in New York, Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, along with interactive media scholar Dr. James Paul Gee, announced a promising new initiative - if teens are motivated to learn about media, then why not reach them through a computer game?

The project, called Our Courts, will be a game designed to teach civics and encourage teens to become involved in the democratic process. It's being developed with input from teachers and curriculum specialists, and will be designed primarily for classroom use. Initially, the project will emphasise the court system, but will later expand to other areas of government.

"What we hope to do is pioneer a new teaching method designed to respond to the learning styles of this digital generation", said Justice O'Connor in an address on the Our Courts website. "Students today seem to thrive on 3-dimensional, discovery-based learning. They're much less wedded to linear presentations of information, and they prefer to explore around an issue. They seem to learn best by becoming fully engaged in an interesting issue, and they do particularly well when learning in a case study environment".

"Digital students crave a media feedback, and they want convenience. Now, we hope to respond to each of these needs in the Our Courts online environment".

Hit the jump for full details from Our Courts' mission statement:

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Chip maker AMD's philanthropic foundation is getting behind games for social change. At the 2008 Games for Change event in New York, chip maker AMD announced its "Changing the Game" program, which aims to teach kids to develop games with social content.

AMD also sponsored the Games For Change event, where it announced that its AMD Foundation will offer grants to non-profits that teach social game development to kids, including Girlstart, GlobalKids, Institute for Urban Game Design and Science Buddies. AMD also told us at the event that beyond donations, its employees will do volunteer work supporting these efforts.

Part of AMD's support for Games For Change includes "Let the Games Begin," a workshop co-sponsored with the MacArthur Foundation that aims to teach nonprofits how to build games around social issues, and the company will also create a how-to toolkit for Games For Change that includes information and guidance on building these projects.

Full details follow the jump:

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Last night, an expo was held at the 2008 Games For Change event in New York City, to showcase the six finalists in Microsoft's Imagine Cup competition. Students from around the world were challenged to build games around the theme of environmental sustainability, using Microsoft's XNA community tools

The winner will be chosen at an upcoming Finals event in Paris next month.

"This is just our small part we're playing," Microsoft XNA general manager Chris Satchell told us. "It's really a broader challenge to the industry."

Microsoft can provide tools and a platform to support the development of socially-conscious games and to help them reach an audience where they're already playing, Satchell said. "But no magic happens without the creators... it's the stars that really produce."

You can see a compilation video of the six "star" finalists above, and hit the jump to see video of the games, along with more info about the concepts and the teams behind them.

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At the Games For Change 2008 festival in New York, the key topic was creating games as agents for social change - and included in events today was a panel on alternate reality games (ARGs), defined as collaborative, primarily user-motivated events that make the distribution of information into an entertainment experience.

You may remember World Without Oil, which invited people to visit a website to share fictional stories that imagined their lives in the event of a severe oil shortage. Player ideas were incorporated as part of the ongoing narrative on the site, and players could add photos or mail letters to the game operators. It's considered groundbreaking, because it was one of the first ARGs that attempted to address a real world issue.

So how much does it cost to make a game like that? Sounds easy, right?

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"Imagine a world where we have no ability to influence the people that are going to lead and shape thought for tomorrow," said Microsoft's Chris Satchell, general manager of XNA.

"We have social causes we care about, but we don't have the means to connect with people who can do something about them. We're not there, but its a world that's possible to see unless actvitiesi like we're doing here today really gain some momentum."

Satchell was at the 2008 annual Games For Change festival, discussing the ways Microsoft hopes its XNA development platform will help provide creative activists and educators the tools and opportunities to connect with the young, energetic audience passionate about new media and world issues.

"People will base their lives around gaming experiences; gaming experiences will permeate their lives," he said, stressing just how important it was for the culture to recognise games as agents of genuine social impact.

So what is Microsoft doing?

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In mid-1980s Nicaragua, a woman stood beside a burnt out bus in a tiny, remote town. Game designer Jim Gasperini was in the region to visit his brother, a journalist covering Contra issues during the Reagan administration.

The bus, the woman told Gasperini, had been provided by the Nicaraguan government, and she had relied on it as her only means of visiting her sister. The Contras - anti-government guerillas funded by the U.S. - had destroyed the bus. The woman, passionate about American democracy, told Gasperini that if he could just tell everyone back in the States about what had happened to her bus, Americans would vote to help, the Contras would cease their attacks, and she could travel to her sister's again.

Touched by her plight and by her faith, Gasperini wondered what he could do to disseminate information about the Contra situation. In the end, he decided to do what he did best: Make a game.

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