This is a really big day for me, and I hope for serious games in general. Today, I'm going to let you in on a secret, but I have to ask you to keep quiet about it. Pinky promise?
We have partnered with Pragmatic Solutions to launch the first (no disrespect to our friends at SGI and the Serious Games Exposed project) portal and distribution site for serious games! Pragmatic, you will remember, is the brains behind America's Army, providing all the back-end infrastructure, the hugely complex real-time analytics engine, and worldwide distribution.
The portal (we'll take name suggestions) provides access to a catalog of games from developers around the world and handles all the e-commerce components for buyers. The deep analytics are available to all serious game developers who join our network. The social networking component enables users to share learning experiences, join game groups or teams, and recommend helpful titles to other users. The advertising network generates co-op revenues that will be shared with developers who opt-in to this feature. Best of all, this service is FREE to game developers/purveyors.
Right now, we are provisioning the system with two things: a massive competencies engine against which we match games; AND, the game system itself.
What does this mean to you? If you are a developer/purveyor of serious games anywhere in the world and have one or more titles that you offer for commercial distribution - even if you offer them for free - we want to hear from you! We are loading the system with as many games as we can during the next six weeks - in preparation for our less-secret announcement coming early this Summer.
Interested parties should contact secrets@imserious.net. Let us know about you and your game(s) - title, subject matter, learning objectives/outcomes, kind of game, number of players, your contact information. We are vetting many titles right now, so don't miss the opportunity to be part of the big announcement.
I'm really, really serious,
Anne
