Baseball really is a serious game! Why else would conservative columnist, George F. Will, depart from all things political to pontificate on baseball from time to time? Or why would Billy Crystal make the movie “61*” about Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and the 1961 Yankees team? Crystal and Will would both assert that they are serious about baseball, because they love the game!
As everyone knows, America’s pastime is a serious game because it is about serious money! Multi-million dollar player contracts abound. A ticket to the opening game of the San Francisco Giants at the Los Angeles Dodgers ranged in price from $9 to $650 per seat! Liberty Media purchased the Atlanta Braves last year for an assigned value of $461 million dollars, and the Washington Nationals just inaugurated a brand new stadium, overlooking the U.S. Capitol Building, at a cost to taxpayers of $611 million dollars!
At February’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, I listened to a presentation about “The Paradox of Play: The Challenge of Measuring What Game Players Learn”. Three presenters were in agreement that you can learn using games and that learning can be measured. The fourth expressed reservations and forcefully challenged the room about the nature of learning in a game setting. He believes games are fun, but that learning from computer games may be somewhat of a myth and that measuring that learning is an even more dubious exercise.
This discussion caused me to reflect back to my Little League baseball days, and how much pure joy I derived from playing the game. More importantly, I reflect now upon what I learned playing a “fun” game: leadership, teamwork, fair play, and personal sacrifice. As we debate whether real learning occurs with games, I find that these four attributes from my baseball days are every bit as valid descriptors, among many, of what we learn playing computer games and using immersive learning simulations in the serious games arena.
This inaugural post is meant to hint at the subjects on which I will blog; namely ”money” in serious games, including monetization strategies, capital formation, procurement, revenue streams, market analysis, marketing strategy, and the relationship that must be built between the teams of learning designers and the folks who write the big checks that create viability for the industry of serious games.
I was quite surprised at GDC just how limited the discussion was when it comes to money. In some sessions, where I would have expected some mention of it, there was none. And even in the sessions specifically tailored to money, including ad revenue structures and other pricing strategies, many participants were there to listen and learn, mostly, it seemed, because they were not conversant on the relevant subjects.
I will blog a bit more in my next post on this subject specifically as I relate it to one of the main reasons, in my view, that the dot-com industry collapsed a few years ago.
For now…. Serious Games ARE about Serious Money!
I’m Serious!
Michael
