For more than a decade, the Games+Learning+Society (GLS) Conference served as the premiere conference event in the field of games for impact, drawing together creative game design talent, research scholars, and master teachers in conversation about the capacities of games for learning, emotional well-being, and social change. Hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison for 12 years (2005-2016) and reconvened at the University of California, Irvine in 2022 after the covid epidemic, reuniting colleagues one more time for an agenda reset in response to the new challenges facing us both nationally and globally, the GLS conference aims to foster productive dialogue and the cross-pollination of ideas about interactive media and the ways in which it can be leveraged toward productive ends. The proceedings below reflect six of the twelve years of GLS content, including peer reviewed research papers, hands-on workshops, and short paper abstracts. The thinkers, makers, and doers reflected therein represent some of the best and brightest examples of thing value, meaning and impact of play.
