Serious Games Grad Program

Key areas mentioned are of interest.  Good to follow for new developments.

UC Santa Cruz Launches First Graduate Program in Serious Games
University of California, Santa Cruz
Tim Stephens; James McGirk

The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz) Baskin School of Engineering is launching the first professional master's degree program in serious games offered in the U.S. Serious games are designed to accomplish a purpose other than pure entertainment, aiming to impact measurable social goals. The serious games program, which will begin accepting students this fall, builds on existing expertise at UC Santa Cruz in assistive technologies, games and playable media, digital art and new media, psychology, and other related disciplines. The new program will train students over five academic quarters in six key areas: game design, game technology, eliciting and integrating subject matter knowledge, designing and conducting efficacy measures, effective teamwork, and career planning.  ... " 

Total Engagement via Games

Although published late last year, this book was recently brought to my attention: Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete by Byron Reeves and J. Leighton. The book's site is here, and there are also a number of book excerpts. The Amazon site also has a 'look inside' link.

Serious Games have been a long-time interest of mine. Have been reading Total Engagement for several days now in a borrowed North Georgia mountain cabin. (Thanks Sammy). Think about any job as a game, often a very badly designed game. If it were designed to be engaging, collaborative and very efficient at its goal (say making money or helping people) it could not only do a better job at its goal, but also engage, entertain and make the people working at the 'job' happier. Its funny, but there are many examples of engaging multi-player games that are played by millions of people world-wide. Why not use them for real jobs?

There is a real gem of value in this book. I know lots of people that may see any games as non-serious by definition, but it is exactly that assumption that keeps us from solving many problems efficiently.

The authors include a number of examples of potential serious games from their interviews with companies, including my former enterprise, which did have a reputation for being less creative in this regard. There are corporate problems that games might solve, as one chapter suggests. It is still not an easy thing to do, but this book outlines how to start. Bravo ... this books lays out the direction for any company to use games as a problem-solving tool.

We connected with Byron Reeves at Stanford a number of times and reviewed his Seriosity work, which also has a blog. And is active on Twitter. Some of Byron Reeves ideas were also inspirational for our early online consumer advisory work. Also see the Serious Games Twitter Stream.

I will continue to follow up with additional thoughts derived from this book.

Generating Serious Games Scenarios with Crowdsourcing

In MIT Technology Review:  As summary of a technical paper, which is pointed to.  This is the kind of application we used to call 'serious games', but now is more often called gamification.  Currently involved in such an effort.  It can be messy to generate such games.  I like the attempt at modeling and simulating real scenarios using game dynamics with crowdsourcing.   Worth a further look as a methodology.  " ... solves a significant problem with serious games. Until now, developers have had to spend an awful lot of time producing realistic content, a process known as procedural content generation. That’s always been straightforward for things like textures, models and terrain in game settings. Now, thanks to this new crowdsourcing technique, it can be just as easy for human interactions in serious games too. .... "  

Game Builder to Build Your Serious Games?

Took a quick look, and the approach is set up for non-serious games.  But could such a method be used to construct special purpose games that would interact with their context to achieve serious goals?  Always thought you needed much better control of the context and meta-game and goals to make that happen.  Is that here?

Google's Game Builder Turns Building Multiplayer Games into a Game 
in TechCrunch
By Frederic Lardinois

Google's Area 120 team has developed Game Builder, a free tool for PC and macOS users who want to build their own 3D games without having to learn to code. The overall design aesthetic is at least partially inspired by Minecraft, but users are free to create whatever kind of game they want. Game Builder can create first-person shooter games, a platformer, and a demo of the tool's card system for programming more complex interactions. Building a 3D level is like playing a game itself, and users can build multiplayer games and even create games in real time with other users. In addition, players can use JavaScript to go beyond some of the pre-programmed features. Google is also relying on Poly, its library of 3D objects, to give users lots of options for creating and designing different levels. ... '

Serious Games for Learning

In Serious Games Market:    " ... Mecanika is a physics-based puzzle Serious Game designed by François Boucher-Genesse to help players intuitively learn classical mechanics concepts -- kinematics and dynamics. The game is the result of collaboration between the Montreal game studio CREO and the University of Quebec At Montreal

Intended for students aged 15-17, Mecanika is based on 30 years of research in the didactics of science and aims to make abstract concepts of mechanical physics, like gravity and inertia, accessible. Rather than teaching formulas, the game allows players to immediately jump into these concepts by experimenting and visualizing the effects of forces in space. .... " 

The Serious Games Market blog covers other related applications.   Note the use of virtual simulation spaces to understand the outcome of choices.    Available free and to be adapted for tablet use.

Serious Games Institute

Recent posts reminded me of the Serious Games Institute. Check out their site and especially some of their research and case studies. They are also advertising the Serious Virtual Worlds Conference on Sept 11-12 in South Korea, wish that I could attend.

I remain excited about the idea of using game-style solutions for collaboration, competition and problem solving. I have now seen many prototypes but I have not seen the details of too many completely successful games in business. They are all enticing and fun and may interest some for a while, but don't seem to have sticking power. To do them right they are also expensive to create.

The related vision of serious virtual worlds also has a similar problem. Virtual worlds today are hard to strictly script, while games work best when focused to a problem. Combining the two for real business problems is where we have to go.

Serious Games Institute

Revisited the Serious Game Institute.   " ... An International Centre for Excellence in Serious Games Applied Research, Business Engagement and Study .... " .    Been a few years since I have heard from them.      I see their work as different from gamification,  more serious, not necessarily including surface level games.     Simulation and emulation depth.  But would like to see more recent views.

Serious Games

Have long looked for games that were serious enough, and fun enough.   Here at least the data is serious enough.  But how do we connect very different goals?  Perhaps in the creative space.

Google Maps adds a city-themed 'Snake' game

Elements of serious games?  Probably not, but looking for that angle.    Ideas?

Games With a Purpose

I have been looking at a number of online 'games with a purpose' aka 'serious games' , especially how they can be related to more elaborate simulations ... Here is something new and related:

" ... Luis von Ahn and his team at Carnegie Mellon University have launched GWAP, a new web site for 'Games With A Purpose.' By playing these online games, humans help provide data for problems that are hard for computers to solve, such as computer vision and sound classification. Slashdot has previously covered other human computation projects by Dr. von Ahn, including the ESP Game and reCAPTCHA. The new web site contains a re-vamping of the ESP Game as well as four completely new games." ...

Mentioned in the BBC. Note this is about getting data from people, somewhat different from playing complex games to achieve process solutions, but there is a useful connection.

On Serious Gamification

Podcast on the evolution of serious gamification.   We used it to some extent in the enterprise, but never to my satisfaction.  It requires a change in business user behavior.  There is much opportunity here.

Podcast:

‘For the Win’ authors Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter discuss the revised and updated edition of their book and how gamification has changed the way we work toward goals.

The story of gamification isn’t fun and games. It’s serious.

Authors Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter have been at the forefront of the development of gamification tools in business. In a revised and updated edition of their book, For the Win: The Power of Gamification and Game Thinking in Business, Education, Government, and Social Impact, they explain that when used carefully and thoughtfully, gamification produces great outcomes for users, in ways that are hard to replicate through other methods. Other times, companies misuse the “guided missile” of gamification to have people work and do things in ways that are against their self-interest.

The authors recently sat down with Brett LoGiurato, senior editor at Wharton School Press, to discuss their revised and updated book.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows:

Brett LoGiurato: I wanted to talk first about your initial interest in gamification and what drew you together. I understand it started as a shared interest in World of Warcraft, so how did you develop it from there?

Kevin Werbach: It was a shared interest in games and the power of games. We were originally both faculty at Wharton, and we were both studying what was then called “cyberspace”—virtual worlds. Dan actually did this work before I did, but he and others started looking at virtual worlds of games and comparing that to the virtual world that was getting built with the internet in cyberspace. I found that incredibly fascinating, and I found Dan to be a really brilliant guy, as well. So we became friends, and one of the things that we did was with a group of researchers, journalists and others who studied games in virtual worlds — we got together and started playing a game, World of Warcraft, back when it originally launched, now 15-plus years ago.

That experience of seeing what it was actually like in this incredibly sophisticated virtual world really further kindled our interest. Then when this phenomenon of gamification started to develop a couple of years later, people were saying, “We can learn from games and take insights from developing effective games and apply that to business and apply that to the things in the real world that we are studying.” I think that’s really the point where both of us jumped and said, “Yes, we really think this is something significant, and we can contribute to the understanding.”  ....  '

Reading: Reality is Broken

I am doing some research in the area of 'gamification' and the use of games to improve serious work processes.  That and some emerging project work has led me to start reading: Reality Is Broken: What Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World:

by Jane McGonigal.

 

 I am a long time practitioner of industrial simulation, where it is common to ask the question 'what if'?  Always thought there was a competition dynamic that could bring together simulation and gaming, and we experimented with the idea.

There you could see executives in the enterprise  have their eyes light up when they tested an idea they had for a long time but was just too risky to test in the real world.  They were having fun! They also expressed an interest in exposing the idea to other creatives to see what they could do with their idea as a starting point. 

So far the book does an excellent job of providing the motivation for using games in this space.   Also provides lots of real world examples.  Further she mentions to ability to scale up games to let many experts, employees and even consumers participate.  Why not crowd source a simulation?  Our own in enterprise experiments with serious games were only partly successful, but the interest was there.

 I have a problem with the title of the book.  I do not think reality is broken.  It is ultimately what we must deal with.   It can be motivated, assisted, augmented and extended, and that is what we seek.   There are many opportunities here. 

See also McGonigal's Ted video.  (Thanks Dave)

There are many vendors, but take a look at Bunchball as an excellent example.

Great read so far, look forward to making some of this happen.  I will experiment with revealing some more details in this space, confidentiality allowing, as I progress.  I would appreciate any guidance from others out there.

Serious Games

A toolkit for serious games.

Game Based Learning

An obvious space for the idea, would like to see it taken further.  See my long term coverage of gamification and serious games at the links below.  We even had some successes in the otherwise somber enterprise.   Still following.

The rise of game-based learning by Alice Savage meets the children taking gamification to the next level by learning to code through their own games  ... 

With many affordable products on the market, game-based learning is becoming a recognisable feature of the British classroom. Learning subjects through games can greatly improve pupil engagement in a subject and provide teachers with instant feedback, analytics and other teaching tools that can tailor a learning programme for each individual student. The rise of game-based learning has now paved the way for a new level of engagement from students with new opportunities arising for them to learn to make their own games  ... " 

Trends in the Mobile Gaming Industry and Serious Games

In Mashable:  These trends are mostly about mobile gaming for entertainment, but I watch these trends for their potential applications beyond the 'angry avians' places.    I am struck by the increasing ability to do serious things in contexts like tablets, where there will be enough real estate to clearly mark out say a process that has real choices in a corporate decision making palette.  That for internally facing games.   Or for mapping  consumer choices,  in externally facing games.   Smart phones are just too small to provide more than trivial choices-spaces.  Making a decision process into a game requires that the designer differentiate the choices.  That was made clear to me as I started to explore the use of mobile devices for mind-mapping.  Looking further on that now.   Thoughts?

Learning with Serious Games

On learning through games and simulations. ' ... Karl Kapp, professor, author and speaker, understands the value of games and simulations in learning. In this two-part interview, Karl covers everything from video games to virtual 3D worlds, their cognitive advantages and future trends in online learning ... '

Learning with Serious Games

I have long been interested in using games for serious learning. Doesn't it make great sense to use the fun, competition and often addictive nature of the game to help people learn and master complex tasks? Yet despite the obvious application of the idea, you see relatively little of it in the enterprise. There is a new book, reviewed here, that addresses the topic. Learnings with Digital Games by Nicola Whitton. It says it is focused on higher education rather than the enterprise. It is on my list to read. Other suggestions in this area?

Games and Cognitive Computing

In Today's CSIG, series: Simon Ellis,  Phd student from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) "Playing Games with Cognitive Computing"  Slides.     You can also get a recording of the talk.  This is not about serious games or gamification, but about the long history of AI being tested with games using methods like simulation and search.

Wharton Book and Podcast: On Serious Gamification

Book and podcast on the subject:

Gamification Is Changing How We Work — and Succeed

‘For the Win’ authors Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter discuss the revised and updated edition of their book and how gamification has changed the way we work toward goals.

Podcast  At link ... 

The story of gamification isn’t fun and games. It’s serious.

Authors Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter have been at the forefront of the development of gamification tools in business. In a revised and updated edition of their book, For the Win: The Power of Gamification and Game Thinking in Business, Education, Government, and Social Impact, they explain that when used carefully and thoughtfully, gamification produces great outcomes for users, in ways that are hard to replicate through other methods. Other times, companies misuse the “guided missile” of gamification to have people work and do things in ways that are against their self-interest.

The authors recently sat down with Brett LoGiurato, senior editor at Wharton School Press, to discuss their revised and updated book.

An edited transcript of the podcast conversation follows. 

Brett LoGiurato: I wanted to talk first about your initial interest in gamification and what drew you together. I understand it started as a shared interest in World of Warcraft, so how did you develop it from there?

Kevin Werbach: It was a shared interest in games and the power of games. We were originally both faculty at Wharton, and we were both studying what was then called “cyberspace”—virtual worlds. Dan actually did this work before I did, but he and others started looking at virtual worlds of games and comparing that to the virtual world that was getting built with the internet in cyberspace. I found that incredibly fascinating, and I found Dan to be a really brilliant guy, as well. So we became friends, and one of the things that we did was with a group of researchers, journalists and others who studied games in virtual worlds — we got together and started playing a game, World of Warcraft, back when it originally launched, now 15-plus years ago.  ...'

KTM Advance - Games and e-Learning

Newly discovered, KTM-Advance,   E-Learning and serious games. Have been examining that aspect of games recently. In particular regarding sales training.   Appears to be an interesting solution to examine.  One of their client studies starts: 

" ...E-LEARNING - Product Knowledge/ Sales for LVMH
Estates & Wines, a Moët Hennessy society, is the international subsidiary of the LVMH Group tasked with marketing high-end still and sparkling wines. E&W accounts for 7 different brands throughout the world and more than 40 wines. The sales representatives of E&W are recruited from the most prestigious schools, but have often little experience or comfort in the high-end wine market with merchants, sommeliers and restorers. Thus, E&W needed a specific formation of its sales force ... "

Artafact and Serious Games for Customer Insight

Brought to my attention,  an AMA Webcast on November 19, 2013 at 12 noon CST: By Research company Artafact.  and Innovation Games (who is providing the gaming expertise)

" ... How can you use gaming techniques to gain valuable customer insights? In this Webcast, Sumi Shohara, Director of Customer Advocacy for Hewlett-Packard, and Linda Stegeman, President of research company Artafact, will share how HP Software uses interactive games to engage their customers in everything from strategy and product development to marketing messaging.

Specifically they will cover how gamification techniques can help:

- Form innovative ideas to implement
- Let your customers help you determine the product vision
- Rank feature lists by letting customers choose the most important features
- Mine the return on investment customers receive from your product and services ..... " 

More information and registration.