“Are you feeling groovy?!” bellowed brothers Keith Lyndaker Schlabach and Brent Lyndaker at the start of their seminar, “Got game? Developing and playing peace games: A PeaceGrooves gathering.”

They had to repeat the question several times until a satisfactorily energetic “Yes!” echoed through the audience.

The brothers began their project, PeaceGrooves, out of a love of games, and a desire for peace. “People are just tired of the old stuff,” explained Lyndaker Schlabach, saying that most online and video games today promote violence and killing.

“Why do you play games?” he asked. “It’s because of the community, the interaction with other people and how it makes you feel.”

The brothers noted that 9 out of 10 people don’t play online games, whether World of Warcraft or Halo, because of the game, but because of the interaction with other people around the world. “We’re trying to create games that have a community, but that are teaching people how to resolve conflict instead of how to create it,” Lyndaker Schlabach said.

The brothers’ hope for  “PeaceGrooves” is that youth can learn anger management skills as well as how to resolve conflict in their personal lives and globally.

They kicked off the seminar with a game of “WWJP”— a peaceful competition that benefits the other person. Lyndaker Schlabach said: “See those stickers? They stand for What Would Jesus Play. Get up, place those stickers on the back of everyone you see, and whoever has the most stickers on their back by the end wins.”

The brothers led other games throughout the seminar, including one with two groups of people, the “Mutants” and the “Blinders.” These two groups had to collaborate with each other and learn where they came from, what they needed and where they were going. The catch: Mutants could not speak and Blinders could not see.

Horin Byler and Bob Troyer of Canton, Ohio, completed the game— they used each other’s hands by putting them on their heads and shaking yes or no. Others solved the game by writing with fingers on chests, clapping and stopping for yes or no, or using hands to create shapes.

Seminar attendees then took on the challenge of inventing a peace game in 15 minutes. “We wanted to do this at convention because it’s a community, with similar people having a drive to work together and develop games that benefit society and ourselves,” Lyndaker Schlabach said.

After each table explained the name and concept of their game, Lyndaker Schlabach said, “These are all amazing ideas you guys! I would like to take them all and publish them.”

The brothers then encouraged youth, ages 13-18, to enter into the 2009 Youth Peace Game Creation contest that they’re sponsoring. Contestants can register online, and receive one year to create the concept and game design. The winner receives a laptop, $200 or an iPod.

For more information about the youth contest or about PeaceGrooves in general, go to www.peacegrooves.com or peacegrooves.wordpress.com, or send an e-mail note to info@peacegrooves.com.