Serious Games Source News

I/ITSEC Serious Games Showcase & Challenge Calls For Entries

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:00:00 -0400

The Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) has announced a call for entries to the Third Annual I/ITSEC Serious Games Showcase & Challenge. Serious Game developers are invited to submit their original serious game for a place in the showcase at I/ITSEC 2008. Finalists in the Serious Game Showcase & Challenge will be selected by a panel from the gaming, industry and academic fields, and awards will be presented to the top finishers. The ...

BreakAway To Demonstrate Serious Games To Congressional Caucus

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:00:00 -0400

BreakAway, a developer of game-based technology solutions for training, experimentation and decision-making analysis, has announced they are to to demonstrate straining tool Pulse!! and Incident Commander for a Congressional Caucus on Modeling and Simulation. Pulse!! is a game-based technology intended allow students and medical professionals a virtual tool to practice "decision-making protocol and clinical skills" on PCs in a virtual hospital setting, and was developed in conjunction with Texas A& M University - Corpus Christi ...

Educational Feature: Ocean Summits and Virtual Fish

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:00:00 -0400

The University of British Columbia (UBC) Fisheries Centre and a team of students from the Masters of Digital Media (MDM) Program of Great Northern Way Campus in Vancouver have created a virtual underwater view of the Gulf of Mexico using game technologies. GameCareerGuide.com has a new feature article written by one of the student developers that explains how this, and future, 3D models of marine ecosystems will be used by sustainability advocates to educate policymakers ...

Analysis: Games Create 'Passion Communities' For Learning

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 03:08:00 -0400

Professor James Gee kicked off the 4th Games, Learning, and Society Conference in Madison, Wisconsin with a talk entitled "Beyond Games & the Future of Learning", citing titles from Portal to World Of Warcraft to explain why games are uniquely suited to create 'passion communities' where learning can thrive. Gee is Professor of Literacy at Arizona State University and the author of 'What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy' (2003) and ...

City Rain Tops Eco-Minded XNA Student Game Challenge

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 06:00:00 -0400

Games for Change has announced the winners of its international global warming-themed XNA game development contest on environmental sustainability, part of Microsoft's Imagine Cup 2008. First place went to City Rain (pictured) from Brazil-based Mother Gaia Studio, with second place going to Future Flow from Belgium's Drunk Puppy, and third place to Clean Up from South Korea's Gomz. Microsoft and Games for Change describe City Rain as a single-player 3-D "Sim City meets Tetris," where ...

PETLab To Develop Fiscal Game For College Students

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 10:00:00 -0400

The National Academy of Public Administration and PETLab (an initiative of Parsons The New School for Design and Games for Change) have announced that they are to develop an game for college students about America's fiscal future, funded by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. The title is to launch on college campuses in spring 2009, and is to be free to students. The six-month project is to "produce a game to raise awareness, increase understanding ...

Survey Claims Parents Comfortable With Video Game Learning

Tue, 8 Jul 2008 12:00:00 -0400

In a recent survey by ConsumerQuest for LeapFrog Enterprises 66% of parents of three- to 11-year-olds have agreed that they feel playing with educational video games "gives their child an educational advantage." The survey was conducted with over 1,000 parents, and from the sample, for parents of children six to eleven years old, there was a 22% decline in the number of parents who said they didn't like their children spending time playing video games ...

Analysis: Making DDR For Seniors With Touchtown's Dancetown

Fri, 4 Jul 2008 02:50:00 -0400

In this session from the recent Games for Health conference, Jeff Pepper, President and CEO of Touchtown, discussed his company's work in creating Dancetown - a PC-based dance game specifically aimed at older players and retirement homes, to give players regular exercise and reduce the risk of falling. Touchtown is a 9-year old company out of Pittsburgh that was originally not a game company, but provided digital signage and TV to retirement homes. Two years ...

SMU's Guildhall Collaborates On Dating Violence Avoidance Simulator

Thu, 3 Jul 2008 12:00:00 -0400

Video game development university The Guildhall at SMU has announced a collaboration with Dedman College's psychology department to create a program to help women practice strategies for averting sexual assault in "a controlled situation that is safe, yet feels realistic." As described by the university, the system is to feature two automobile seats "bolted to a raised platform" with an actor in the driver's seat. The female user sits in the passenger seat wearing video ...

Verizon Rewards $1M Grant For 'Gaming For Learning' Project

Tue, 1 Jul 2008 06:50:00 -0400

The Verizon Foundation, Verizon Communications' philanthropic arm, has provided a $1 million grant to the American Library Association (ALA) for a project aiming to track and measure gaming's impact on problem-solving literacy skills. With its research, the ALA hopes to build a model for library gaming that can be deployed nationally. The organization will work with 12 "gaming experts" to document how gaming can be used as a literacy tool, monitoring the results of those ...