I'm Serious.net

RWJF announces new grants

Health Games Research: Advancing Effectiveness of Interactive Games for Health is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) that funds research to enhance the quality and impact of interactive games that are used to improve health. The goal of the program is to advance the innovation, design and effectiveness of health games and game technologies so that they help people improve their health-related behaviors and, as a result, achieve significantly better health outcomes. In this round of funding, approximately $2 million will be available to support outstanding research projects that study one or more games designed to increase physical activity and/or improve self-care.

Go here to see the Call for Proposals (PDF). Proposals are due April 8, 2009.

Show Them Your Stuff!

Do you have a great serious game concept? Looking for a reason to build it? How about world-wide renown and a pile of money - is that reason enough? OK - I'm stretching it a bit, but this is a great chance for students and professionals to try their hands at designing and developing a serious game. Prizes will be awarded!

Whosegame, an alpha version from Orange (a French? developer), intends to be a portal for serious games built in Flash. In this early stage of the portal's life, a serious game design contest is being conducted at the site.

According to the site, "[y]ou can submit as many serious games as you want on the following topics:

• improve your knowledge in the telecommunications field
• be an eco-citizen with the help of telecommunications
• acting against isolation and exclusion thanks to telecommunications"

They even give you some examples to get your imagination going.

C'mon now - you have 3 months. Any professors out there looking for a class project?...

I'm serious,
Anne

New Jobs Available in Virginia

The folks at Windwalker are sure churning up the business. Stop by the Opportunities section to see three new full-time serious games jobs they have open!

I'm serious,
Anne

Dashboard learning

In 1956, cognitive psychologist George Miller published a paper entitled, "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information". In his research, he had determined that human short-term memory had a capacity of 7±2 chunks of information. Since then, this "fact" has taken on the mantle of "the Way It Is." Ever wonder why local phone numbers are 7 digits (at the time, it was too expensive to call long distance to worry about remembering area codes)?

If Miller were to conduct his experiments these 53 (Happy New Year, btw) years later, I suspect his findings might be different. The amount of information we must have available to us at any given time is such that we use up our chunks by remembering the places we keep the information we need rather than the information itself. Ellen Wagner recently referred to this as our "dashboard life."

This month's Wired Magazine offers a look at a typical player screen in World of Warcraft, shown below.

And why would a player have so much clutter on the screen? I mean, you can barely see the actual game.

In fact, except for the Bejeweled game ("I need to play Bejeweled so badly I can't even wait to quit WoW first."), each of those windows and icons represents information or tools that are critical to game play. Between item availability lists, food levels, quest tracking, power ups, weapon activation, team communications, area maps, and more, this player would be only marginally effective without all these dashboard pallettes at the ready.

What lessons can designers of immersive learning experiences draw from this?

1. A click away - when I was a baby designer, the folks at Apple taught me that good interface design meant that the user should always be only a click away from what s/he wanted to do next. User demands and expectations haven't lowered.
2. Dashboard interfaces are familiar and comfortable - if well implemented.
3. Dashboard design should not be separate from the overall interface design. These two layers should complement each other for the ease of the user.
4. An effective dashboard is the result of smart, tight information architecture, UX design, and usability testing.

I'm serious,
Anne

Do you know where your critters are?

 There are only 45 days left before Spore is launched! Have you gotten Spore Creature Creator yet? No? Not even sure what I'm talking about?

Spore is the next game phenomenon from Will Wright, creator of The Sims franchise. In Spore, players nurture single-cell animals into sentient beings that create community and build civilizations, eventually exploring and colonizing space. In this video, Will presents Spore - and his game design philosophy, based in large measure on Maria Montessori's philosophy of education. Notably, Will underscores the importance of user-generated content to the player's attachment to the game and the player's overall game experience.

To my mind, there are three key take-aways from Will's presentation:

1. The notion of attachment is vital to learning, too, of course. Attachment creates personal meaning and relevance - important factors to learning, retention, and transference.
2. Learner-generated content is not only useful in demonstrating content mastery; it keeps a learner/player engaged with content - and potentially with other learners/players.
3. Serious game designers have much to learn from the gurus of entertainment game design.

After you look at Will's presentation, create your own critters. Yes, you'll get attached to the little buggers. You'll be very excited to launch them into the Spore universe and grow them into complex societies. Along the way, you'll learn about evolution, biology, geology, climate change, cosmology... Now that's a seriously fun game.

I'm serious,
Anne

Sometimes Business Comes First!

  As I have begun to write this blog, I have found it somewhat difficult to address serious games subjects that are important without also talking about and citing examples of casual or entertainment games.  It is fun to watch an industry grow and mature, and we can see this happening in the entertainment games arena. Part of that maturation process must be focused on responsible and business-like strategies that will foster success in the casual games sector, which can only benefit the entire computer games industry.

The eLearning Guild's annual “360º Report” has a really great essay by Kevin Corti, CEO and Chief Learning Architect of PIXELearning in Coventry, England, entitled “Demystifying Immersive Learning Simulations – Moving From the Potential to the Practical”.  Kevin articulates some really smart strategy and advice on the “business” of serious games.  He gives excellent examples of several corporate and government applications of serious games, and he has some solid advice on how the “vendors”, must frame their products for the “commissioners” who are the end users and buyers of serious 3D immersive learning technology.  Kevin's business leadership at PIXELearning is helping his company compete by successfully framing and selling their technology and their creativity to build important learning simulations for major clients.  Every company that will compete and survive in our industry will need to heed Kevin's advice!

In a similar vein, Philip Rosedale, creator of Second Life , announced this week that a new CEO, Mark Kingdon, has been appointed to take the helm.  Citing the need for “tremendous business skills and a deep understanding and passion for Second Life and where it is going,” Rosedale noted that “Linden Lab's new chief needed to know how to run a business, not just come up with cool ideas.” Linden Lab is displaying exceptional responsibility to its members and its employees by recognizing that proper and effective management is essential to success.  Obviously, Linden Lab has an eye on going public at some point, and this decision to hire talented business leadership is also an important step toward that goal.

What we must glean from the bits and pieces of written word and firm action, as demonstrated by Corti and Rosedale, is that we must have a sharp eye on the business of serious games.  Success is based, yes, in the “coolness” of this exciting technology, but it is equally rooted in the important foundation of any viable business.  We must frame our industry and its products in a way that helps the commissioners to be comfortable with the technology while also understanding the incredible benefits that come with it.  We must show the buyers of learning technology that they gain efficiency, save money, energize their audience, and enhance their profit margins while embracing innovation for a competitive advantage.  As Corti says, all parties have to be “on the same page”.

The title on that page is “Business Comes First”!

I'm Serious!

Michael

Rant: Companions in Learning???

Pat LaFontaine sure seems like a great guy. He's a Hockey Hall of Famer and All-Star who was forced into retirement in 1998 due to head trauma and concussions. During a period of convalescence, Pat drew solace and inspiration from the many critically ill children and teens who were hospitalized at the same time. Through his experience, he redoubled his efforts and devotion to his foundation, Companions in Courage, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting children and families who are overcoming life-threatening obstacles. CiC has created "Lion's Dens" in a number of children's hospitals around the U.S. - essentially a playroom filled with kiosks and game stations (including an array of adaptive technologies) and conversation areas. CiC says, to quote their website, that "[t]hrough innovative communications tools, these playrooms replace the isolation of a hospital with a connection to family, friends and celebrities during each hospital stay." Yes, emphasis mine.

I guess Robbie Bach must be a great guy, too. He's Microsoft President of Entertainment and Devices Division. He and Pat announced today that their respective organizations are partnering to put "hundreds" of Xbox 360 game kiosks in CiC Lion's Dens. In addition to select games, movies and television content, the Xboxes will be linked to a private network version of Xbox LIVE. The kiosks are preloaded with a variety of E-rated games, Y-rated TV shows, and G-rated movies. Well, Robbie is head of Entertainment and Devices.

I'm an optimist by nature. (What? Fretters can be optimists, too.) I expect all children who go to hospitals come home to live long and healthy lives. But, this of course, does bring up the problem of how much school they are missing when they are working so hard at getting well. And why are these charitably-minded people (aha!) so concerned about entertainment and celebrities and not about school? (You see the fretter-optimist thing now, don't you?)

This seems like such an overlooked opportunity. Particularly when you consider that Robbie's uber-boss is Bill Gates, Chairman of Microsoft and Co-Founder of the Gates Foundation, which considers improving education in America to be one of its principal objectives.

C'mon guys. One of the great ways to help kids - or anyone - not just heal, but have a successful re-entry into the world is by keeping them engaged with the world they can't participate in right now. As every parent knows, kids want to learn, even sick ones. Let's not just think about entertaining them so that time passes more quickly. Let's also think about how we can keep their minds engaged, with the world and with learning!

I'm serious,
Anne

Oh Talent, where art thou?

  In the 1970s and 1980s, the Pentagon, other government agencies, and the relatively fledgling semiconductor industry recognized that America needed trained talent if it hoped to achieve success and even dominance in the semiconductor marketplace. It was critically important, in the mindset of American defense leadership, that America train its own “patriots” to help build the semiconductor industry into the giant it is today. The country’s secrets could not be entrusted to aliens from other nations.

To that end, the semiconductor industry, with a big helping hand from the US Government and the Pentagon, launched a research and education arm that was designed to foster the development of University grant programs that would lead semiconductor research and train graduate students in the field. This was a very successful initiative that has led our country to a leadership position in cutting-edge technology development in chip design and manufacturing.

In the serious computer games arena, we are at a similar crossroads. We have a fair amount of garage- and basement-based designers who are working to build a brand new game or design the next, most awesome raceway scenario. How do we interest this burgeoning talent in serious games? Is it important that we help to convert this talent pool to the serious side of the equation? How is formal education and training built into their experience so that we have properly trained and effective designers ready for the employment ranks of serious games companies?

The good news is that several universities are already building curricula and laboratories that train our next generational talent pool. At the University of Central Florida, the University of Maryland, the Universities of Birmingham City and Coventry in the U.K., and Full Sail for example, programs are in place already, and both undergraduate and graduate students are in the learning phase while they are doing hands-on development of important projects using 3D immersive learning simulations at their core.

Quite a few other universities are designing programs and have a bit more work to do before they start turning out fresh, talented, and capable designers for the serious games arena. There is money to be made by this talent pool, and they are the future of our industry. Equally important, more talent means more opportunity to accelerate the serious games industry, fueling an important economic engine that needs all the resources we can pour into it! We run the risk that demand for serious games cannot be met without a larger pool of talent, and we need to be thinking about strategies that will foster the development of these educational programs at universities large and small!

I’d like to hear from folks at colleges and universities who are engaged in all levels of this important curriculum and learning development.

I’m Serious!

Michael

Wording is Everything!

Those of us who are immersed in the serious games arena find it fairly easy to articulate our goals, strategy, and dreams about serious games. To the uninitiated, however, getting your head around such innovative technology can be a real challenge. One of the important aspects of development of the serious games industry, including penetration into the marketplace, is how we articulate to potential buyers and future disciples the features and benefits of serious games. The “elevator message” is critical to capturing their attention in short order.

As our industry seeks funding from all kinds of sources and as we market 3D Immersive Learning Simulations to corporate America and beyond, it will be necessary to define serious games in laymen’s terms. If we expect to “sell” a project or an educational or marketing opportunity, we must define it sensibly to the buyer; be they a grantor, venture capitalist, or corporate executive. This constituency is broad and diverse, and making it simple and logical will greatly enhance our success in growing our business.

Forterra Systems, Inc, provider of a virtual world platform called OLIVE, has just unveiled its new website, crafting excellent language that can be beneficial to all of us who try to educate the marketplace, never mind our friends and families, about the significant opportunities that come with the implementation of 3D Immersive Learning Simulations. I encourage you to check out Forterra’s new website and take a moment to admire their articulation of the rationale for serious games in the 21st century!

I’m Serious!
Michael

Hope to see you...

Next week, I will be attending the eLearning Guild's Annual Gathering in Orlando. If you, too, are planning to attend, I hope you will make both the ILS Symposium (I'm one of the presenters) on Monday and my featured session, "Quick and Easy Ways to Get Started with Serious Games," on Wednesday afternoon.

I look forward to seeing you and hearing about your projects. And if you can't join us, I'll say "hi" to Mickey for you.

I'm Serious,
Anne