Designer
Game designers, systems designers, UX designers, and service designers with shipped work and a feel for behavior change.
A 12-month paid fellowship for designers, developers, producers, and researchers who want to ship games that matter. You’ll be embedded with a nonprofit or public agency, mentored by senior practitioners, and supported by a cohort of peers doing the same.
Paid as W-2 income, semi-monthly payroll.
Medical, dental, vision; 403(b) with match; paid time off and parental leave on the same terms as full-time staff.
Laptop, software, home-office stipend, professional-development budget, travel for required convenings.
Embedded with a host nonprofit or public agency on a real product with real users.
Paired with mentors from the game industry and the public-interest sector.
Lifetime access, recruiting events with Partner Studios, ongoing mentorship.
Not a side project. Embedded with the host and the cohort full-time for the term.
Mid-career and senior practitioners who can ship. No degree required; demonstrable recent shipped work is.
Genuine interest in working with nonprofit staff, agency officials, and end-users on their terms.
We’ll teach the methods; you bring the willingness to do user research with real participants.
Nonpartisan, nonsectarian work, within our published scope rules.
Some host engagements (especially with minors or vulnerable populations) require a check as a condition of placement.
Cohort 01 is small — 10 to 12 people, working in teams of two to four on each host engagement. We need a balance of these roles. You can apply for more than one if you genuinely work across them.
Game designers, systems designers, UX designers, and service designers with shipped work and a feel for behavior change.
Generalist engineers comfortable with web, mobile, or game-engine stacks. Accessibility and prototyping experience are a plus.
Producers and project managers who’ve shipped under real constraints and can make a small team move with clarity.
User researchers, learning scientists, behavioral scientists, and data analysts who can plan, run, and report on real studies.
You probably qualify if you have at least three years of professional experience in your craft, you’ve shipped at least one product to real users, and you can commit to a 12-month, full-time fellowship in the United States. We support working remotely from any state where the Organization is registered to employ; some travel for cohort convenings is required.
The whole process takes about four months. Each step has a clear decision and a clear next action, and we tell you where you stand.
Submit the form below by the application deadline. ~45 minutes including portfolio links.
First-round review by the program team. We respond to every applicant within 3 weeks.
A short, paid craft exercise (~4 hours) and a 30-minute conversation with two practitioners.
Finalists meet two host organizations to talk through fit. Mutual matching, no forced placements.
Onboard with the cohort, then start your host engagement. Welcome to Game for America.
We read every application. Plain language is welcome — we care more about what you’ve shipped and why you want to do this work than about polished prose.
If your question isn’t here, email fellowship@gameforamerica.org and a real human will reply.
It’s genuinely full-time. The work is too involved to do as a side project, and host organizations are committing to a real engagement. Some fellows have negotiated sabbaticals from their employers; we’re happy to support those conversations and have a sample employer letter you can share.
No. We care about what you’ve shipped, what you’ve learned, and how you work. Many of the strongest practitioners in our field don’t have formal degrees. Recent, demonstrable work matters more than credentials.
Cohort 01 is remote-first within the U.S. You’ll work from your home base in any state where the Organization is registered to employ. Some host engagements may have on-site requirements (especially with public agencies); we tell you up front and never spring relocation on you. We pay for travel to required convenings.
You’re a W-2 employee of Game for America, not a contractor. The stipend is regular wages, with standard tax withholding and access to the benefits described above. You are not an employee of the host organization.
It depends on which hosts make it through our intake for Cohort 01, but examples include teen mental-health screening, benefits-enrollment redesigns, climate decision simulators, and workforce-training tools. We match you with hosts whose projects align with your interests and skills, mutually — no forced placements.
For Cohort 01 we’re only able to support applicants already authorized to work in the U.S. We hope to expand sponsorship in future cohorts, but we don’t want to overpromise.
We don’t make work that advocates the election or defeat of candidates, supports or opposes specific pending legislation as substantial activity, or advocates for or against religious doctrine. We do work on issues that are sometimes contested — vaccine confidence, climate, public benefits — but we ground our products in evidence, not advocacy. Our published scope statement spells this out, and you’d be working within it.
Work product created during the fellowship is generally owned by the Organization, with default release of reusable components under permissive open-source licenses (Apache 2.0 for code, CC BY for content). You can reserve pre-existing IP at the start of your term. Some host agreements require exclusive assignment to the host for legal or regulatory reasons; we’re always clear about IP terms before placement.
Tell us. We provide reasonable accommodations in the application process and throughout the fellowship. Accessibility is core to what we do; we’d rather know early so we can support you well.
That’s up to you. Some alumni go back to industry roles with new context. Some stay in civic tech full-time. Some join host organizations that want to keep them. We support all of those paths through the alumni network and recruiting events with Partner Studios.
Forward this page to a colleague who would be, or explore the other ways to engage with Game for America.