Winners announced in game contest that aims to reduce teen dating violence

Anti-teen violence organization Jennifer Ann's Group today announced the winners of its seventh annual Life. Love. Game Design Challenge.

First launched in 2008, the contest asks young game makers to design a game about Teen Dating Violence without using violence in the game itself. The winner of this year's contest is The Guardian from Perico Team in Argentina which takes the first prize of $7,000. The game is available to play, for free, on Android.

Other top ranked entries include browser game Little Things from Berkley Staite in Canada; Break Free: Stop Dating Violence from Anindya Mathur in India (available soon on Android) and By the Water Cooler from Martin Schneider and Lexi Schneider, in USA. Entrants were judged by a panel of judges from the game industry.

"When we heard about the contest we felt it was a very important cause," said the developers of the winning game, in a joint statement. "Our goal was to create an entertaining game in which people learn about Teen Dating Violence while they play. We believe videogames could be useful tools to help and warn people about this worldwide problem that is TDV."

Note: Polygon news editor Brian Crecente was on the panel of judges and is related to one of the contest's organizers.