February 18 & 19 (Monday & Tuesday)
Room 135, North Hall

The Serious Games Summit GDC spotlights the rapidly growing serious games industry that features the use of interactive games technology within non-entertainment sectors. The summit provides a forum for game developers and industry professionals to examine the future course of serious games development in areas such as education, government, health, military, science, corporate training, first responders, and social change.

Sponsored by:

[See Serious Games Summit sessions]

Serious Games Summit Advisors

Ben Sawyer
Co-Founder
Digitalmill, Inc.

Ben is the producer of VIRTUAL U, a million dollar plus foundation funded project to build a university management simulator. VIRTUAL U, now shipping Version 2.1, was a 2000 Independent Games Festival finalist. Ben is also the author of Serious Games: Improving Public Policy through Game-Based Learning and Simulation Whitepaper for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and was a contributor to Game Developer magazine. Ben also is the author of two books on gaming for Coriolis Group Books and is developing a book on simulations with Paraglyph Press. He has published several research reports on the games industry for DFC Intelligence.

 

Ian Bogost
Assistant Professor / Founding Partner
Georgia Institute of Technology / Persuasive Games LLC

Ian is a videogame designer, critic, and researcher. He is assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and founding partner at Persuasive Games LLC. His research and writing considers videogames as an expressive medium, and his creative practice focuses on games about social and political issues.

Ian is author of Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism, along with several other books and many other writings. He is currently co-authoring a book on the Atari 2600 along with a number of new videogames for that platform. Ian is also completing a game about the politics of nutrition, commissioned by PBS and the iTVS, and designing editorial "newsgames" in a groundbreaking game publishing relationship with the New York Times.

Serious Games Summit Sessions

Day 1: Monday (February 18, 2008)   9:00am — 6:00pm

Serious Games Taxonomy
Speaker(s): Ben Sawyer (Digitalmill) & Peter Smith (University of Central Florida)
Time: 9-9:50am
The serious games space has come a long way in the past five plus years. With a variety of projects now being completed or in various stages of development, it's time to re-examine the space with an eye of providing a stronger definition of the entire field of serious games, including providing some much needed categorization and specific labeling within the large gamut of activity. For the past year Ben Sawyer, co-founder of the Serious Games Initiative, and Peter Smith from University of Central Florida have been assembling a proposed taxonomy of serious games. This taxonomy provides multiple views of the activity within the serious games space and looks at the greater issues of how serious games relates to generalized simulation and modeling as well as the commercial entertainment field.

In this presentation, Sawyer and Smith will present a complete overview of their Serious Games Taxonomy 1.0, providing not only a stronger definition of the serious games field, but also presenting a platform upon which to drive further activity and understanding of serious games, including market opportunities, research requirements, advocacy, criticism, and more. Feedback from the audience will be used to drive refinements to the work prior to publishing it formally.

GAMESTAR MECHANIC: Learning through Game Design
Speaker(s): Katie Salen (Parsons School of Design), Greg Trefry (Gamelab)
Time: 10-10:30am
This session takes on serious games from the perspective of thinking, creating, and learning through making games. GAMESTAR MECHANIC, a commercial online game produced in a unique collaboration between Gamelab and the GAPPs group at University of Wisconsin at Madison, is designed to teach players the fundamentals of game design. Designed to teach young people how to design games by giving them the tools and learning space in which to do it quickly, collaboratively, and easily, GAMESTAR proposes a model for learning that extends traditional notions around game-based learning.

In GAMESTAR players are invited into a narrative world situated within a social network to design, trade, and modify their own small, web-based games. In building games in this environment it is hoped that students not only learn about game design but about how to essentially build literacy about the systems and/or content that their games are based upon.

This session will demo the game and discuss strategies for assessment of the design-based skills that emerge from game-play, offering models for understanding what and how players are learning.

Make this Game Better: THE REDISTRICTING GAME (Part I)
Speaker(s): Chris Swain (University of Southern California)
Time: 10:30-11am
In 2007 Chris Swain lead a USC Annenberg School team to design a serious game with the purpose of helping the public understand the process of legislative redistricting and reforms related to redistricting. Redistricting is the process of producing defined geographic boundaries of population which are represented in Congress or the state legislature. As more and more powerful demographic systems and mapping software have become available, redistricting has grown into a very elite game of optimization also known as gerrymandering. Each side in the process (essentially the two major political parties) attempts to push a slate of designed districts it feels are advantageous to their party's candidates through the legislative and negotiation process. The results can sometimes be astoundingly bizarre shaped districts and ultimately result in voter confusion and disenfranchisement from the entire process.

THE REDISTRICTING GAME tries to capture the core yearning for optimization process that exists in redistricting but then attempts to show users various proposed reforms in the process as new constraints on the rules of the game. Users are then given links to various reform sites as well.

The game is now out and fully playable. Like all games there are many ideas that never made it through the final cut. In this session, Chris will present the full version of THE REDISTRICTING GAME. Two leads from the audience will be announced and then each lead will have over 24 hours to compile ideas into a quick presentation for the following day detailing an imagined 2.0 version of the game and associated project. The goal of this session is not to just make the game itself better but to figure out new ideas the potentially improve the impact of the project's mission. After the presentations the audience will be given a chance to respond. Chris will then offer some rebuttal and comments to the efforts allowing insight into why certain ideas may or may not work from his standpoint as the team lead.

Coffee Break 11-11:10am

Game Engines for Serious Games
Moderator: Ben Sawyer (Digitalmill)
Panelists: Tim Holt (Oregon State University), Perry McDowell (Delta3D), Amulya K. Garga (Lockheed Martin), Roger Smith (U.S. Army Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation)
Time: 11:10am-12:10pm
A major element of the serious games field is the appropriation of game engines of all shapes and sizes to power an application whose core purpose is something other then entertainment. Many of these engines power straight-up simulations, while others power data visualization applications, and of course, games with specific content orientated toward the developer's outcome goals. Given that serious game projects often have special needs and constraints projects often find that the engines they choose come up short in various ways big and small. At the same time companies like Breakaway and Microsoft are bring out engines and platforms that are meant to specifically address aspects of serious games in ways other engines haven't.

During this session a spectrum of serious game developers will discuss from experience the various deltas between what game engines offer today and what they need them to offer in the future. While it is clear that many game engines offer a number of advantages in the general application space, there is a need to communicate more effectively lists of features—big and small—to engine developers that could be of specific help to the serious games market. The goal of this panel is to define not only some of these needs for the most common form of first/third person 3D game engines, but to look even more broadly at other game-engine frameworks such as RPGs, RTS's, wargame engines, interactive fiction, and hypothesize features and approaches that would make these systems more conducive to purposes beyond commercial entertainment.

Lunch 12:10-1:40pm

Serious Game World Reports: Part I (UK & France)
Speaker(s): Robert J. Stone (Human Factors Integration Defence Technology Center), Stephane de Buttet (Agence Rhône-Alpes Numérique - Lyon Game)
Time: 1:40-2:50pm
Around the world more and more regions are developing their own unique serious game projects, research, culture, and industry. In an effort to keep up on the world of serious games we've invited prominent serious game community leaders from their respective regions to provide some critical updates on what is taking place in key regions such as the U.K., France, Japan, Korea, and Canada. Many of these regions have recently held major meetings that included presentations on serious games. A special goal of these reports will be to highlight how people inside and outside of each region can better network to resources located there helping to expand the connections between various geographic centers of serious games activity.

Come increase your worldwide prospective on serious games and learn how to plug into the growing community.

Videogames to Build & Retain TV Audience
Moderator: Noah Falstein
Panelists: Dante Anderson (Kuma Reality Games), Frank Lantz (area/code), Swen Vincke (Larian Studios), Randy Brown (Virtual Heroes, Inc.)
Time: 3-4pm
As more and more audiences on TV fracture television, producers are looking for new ways to find and retain loyal audiences around their shows and the resulting brands. While the world of videogames is awash in titles adapted from TV brand licenses, for commercial entertainment there is a new wave of activity that involves utilizing games to specifically support the core broadcast product.

During this session, a group of panelists will each summarize their unique efforts to create games commissioned in support of a broadcast show, including projects for major networks such as Discovery Channel, BBC, NBC, and The History Channel.

The panel will then discuss the interesting opportunities that can arise to meld TV and videogames into a new product; one that's not yet another retail game licensed from a children's show or an advergame derived from a generic show launch marketing campaign. The goal is to spur discussion about how games can be adjuncts to broadcast shows providing new experiences and community interactions, including the production of educational experiences related to the underlying narrative or documentary forms that many such games for TV projects have taken.

Coffee Break 4-4:10pm

Out of the Box: EA Fuels New Ideas with MADDEN & SIMS Titles
Speaker(s): Rob Moore (EA), Steve Seabolt (EA)
Time: 4:10-4:50pm
Electronic Arts is the largest third party publisher in the world with some of the industry's most successful titles. What if those brands could be extended in new ways beyond core entertainment to create fun new projects?

During this session, attendees will hear about several projects EA has undertaken that involve three of its most successful products ever, MADDEN, SIMCITY, and THE SIMS. Part one of this session will showcase EA Sports Licensing of its football game technology to XOS Technologies for a PlayAction Simulator which was recently credited with being part of LSU's training program for its national championship over Ohio State. In addition, several projects involving EA's SIMS franchises will be detailed including the recent partnership with BP that explores causes and consequences of global warming.

Common to all the examples will be a sense of the creative business, design, partnership, and technology strategies that need to and can come together between major commercial game development and publishing companies and organizations looking to exploit the power of games in new and exciting ways.

Being Brian Crecente: Using an Off-The-Shelf Role Playing Game to Teach Journalism
Speaker(s): Nora Paul (University of Minnesota)
Time: 5-5:30pm
This session details The University of Minnesota's efforts to develop a role-playing game to teach journalism. Working together, professors Kathleen Hansen and Nora Paul lead a team that modified Bioware's NEVERWINTER NIGHTS to teach interview techniques and more to budding journalism students.

The process of using an off-the-shelf game engine offered unique challenges and insights into how others might attempt to build future serious games. Matching common RPG play (especially Bioware ones!) to journalism was a perfect fit. In the game, students move around Harperville and cover the story of a toxic spill caused by a train derailment. Students must investigate and find their angle to the story and file it. NPCs will offer no comment and react to your style of questioning as well.

After detailing the project, discussion will turn to lessons learned and how the next version of the project is moving along providing insight into the iterative learning process many serious game designs require of their proponents.

Meditation & Relaxation with Games
Speaker(s): Ian Bogost (Persuasive Games), Tracy Fullerton (University of Southern California), Wendy Goldner (Wild Divine)
Time: 5:30-6pm
This novel session looks at three extremely diverse projects that combine relaxation, meditation, and contemplation with games. Each project will demo its game and showcase the current state of the project, the insights gained in doing it, and the current outcomes from development. These games include: WILD DIVINE'S JOURNEY TO WILD DIVINE, a biofeedback based game that is has had a successful commercial debut and is used by wellness professionals worldwide; THE NIGHT JOURNEY from USC's Experimental Game Lab is a game that "takes [players] through a poetic landscape, a space that has more reflective and spiritual qualities than geographical ones. The core mechanic in the game is the act of traveling and reflecting rather than reaching certain destination—the trip along a path of enlightenment;” Finally Ian Bogost's GURU MEDITATION is game development retro style, a fully realized meditation game for the Atari 2600 which utilizes Amiga's Joyboard product to allow people to experiment with sitting quietly in meditation.

All three projects ask the same basic question: what novel gameplay can be developed that enables players to become still, contemplative, and relaxed in a truly meditative state. Like many serious game efforts, these ideas fly in the face of what most non-gamers believe about games and thus work to dispel a narrowcasting sentiment of what games can be.

 

Day 2: Tuesday (February 19, 2008)   9:00am — 6:00pm

Microsoft ESP: Taking FLIGHT SIMULATOR from Game to Serious Game
Speaker(s): Shawn Firminger (ACES Studio - Microsoft Game Studios)
Time: 9-9:50am
Microsoft FLIGHT SIMULATOR is Microsoft's longest continuously shipping product. Since its initial launch in 1982, Microsoft has continued to invest heavily in building FLIGHT SIMULATOR's capabilities and realism. In 2006 Microsoft released the current version of this best selling entertainment title, Microsoft FLIGHT SIMULATOR X (FSX). With its growing code base, extensive world content database and newly released API, FSX was poised to move beyond entertainment to become a commercial visual simulation platform, something that many customers and partners had requested for years. Recognizing this outgrowth from one of its top entertainment franchises, in January, Microsoft launched Microsoft ESP into the emerging commercial desktop simulation and training space.

In this session Shawn Firminger, studio manager for Microsoft's ACES Studio, will detail the story behind the platform and how the connection to a retail game is fueling their foray into the world of simulation and training. Attendees will learn not only about the ESP platform, but the challenges faced in converting an engine for a desktop simulation entertainment product into one that can be integrated into mission critical practices and data streams that abound in its target user-base.

PDwii: Using Novel Interfaces to Promote Physical Rehabilitation & Achieve Quantifiable Results
Speaker(s): Bob Hone & Wolf Schuster (Red Hill Studios)
Time: 10-10:30am
Demonstrates the technical feasibility, therapeutic effectiveness, and safety of an innovative computer-based training program aimed at developing stronger gait and balance for patients with Parkinson's Disease. PDwii is currently being developed by Red Hill Studios and the UCSF School of Nursing, with funding by the NIH. Quantifiable results are being used to track patient progress and are being integrated into the patient's overall regime. Results will be used to benefit further innovations in the field of games for health.

The GROUND TRUTH of Game Technologies for Homeland Security Training
Speaker(s): Donna Djordjevich (Homeland Security Systems and Development Center, Sandia National Laboratories)
Time: 10:30-11am
Emerging, changing modes of attack using weapons of mass destruction (WMD) within DHS and DoD threat scenarios require new approaches to examining detection, mitigation, and response options. To educate and train decision makes in the modes of attack and response options specific to their unique requirements we proposed the use of game-based training simulations. This would place multiple participants in the center of the simulation and allow their decisions to influence scenario evolution in a responsive environment. Exploratory live, "fire-drill," training is too expensive to use for awareness gathering and passive, paper-based, training does not present the trainee with experience to effectively face future challenges. This research is aimed at constructing immersive, interactive, gaming environments that allow trainees to interact within the context of a virtual scenario populated by non-player characters and embedded with specific learning objectives. This project is currently in year two of a three-year, internally funded, Sandia commitment.

In this session, the project lead will provide a post-mortem of the project's year one. After providing a demonstration of the game GROUND TRUTH, the speaker will give the audience an in-depth look of the three things that went right and wrong. What went right: 1) Systems approach to game design; 2) Engage Subject Matter Experts early and often; 3) University Collaboration. What went wrong: 1) Contracts; 2) Staffing "churn"; 3) Late engagement of other partners. This talk will end with highlights for current research objectives to include: emotionally driven non-player-characters and adaptive training scenarios.

Coffee Break 11-11:10am

Serious Game World Reports: Part II (Japan & Canada)
Speaker(s): Akira Baba (The University of Tokyo), Nobushige Hichibe (The University of Tokyo), Lori Shyba (Sundial Media), Shinsuke Tomiyasu (The University of Tokyo)
Time: 11:10am-12:10pm
Around the world more and more regions are developing their own unique serious game projects, research, culture, and industry. In an effort to keep up on the world of serious games we've invited prominent serious game community leaders from their respective regions to provide some critical updates on what is taking place in key regions such as the U.K., France, Japan, Korea, and Canada. Many of these regions have recently held major meetings that included presentations on serious games. A special goal of these reports will be to highlight how people inside and outside of each region can better network to resources located there helping to expand the connections between various geographic centers of serious games activity.

Come increase your worldwide prospective on serious games and learn how to plug into the growing community.

Lunch 12:10-1:40pm

The Paradox of Play: The Challenge of Measuring What Game Players Learn
Moderator: Eric Zimmerman (Gamelab)
Panelists: Don Daglow (Stormfront Studios, Inc.), Alex Games, Frank Lantz (area/code), Richard Wainess (University of Southern California)
Time: 1:40-2:50pm
We all have a sense that games are good for players. But what exactly are games teaching, and can we define and measure just what it is that players learn through play?

Increasingly, researchers of games and learning are focusing on the idea that games are best at teaching processes, not information. Games can help players be more creative, learn to strategize, become better problem solvers, become more socialized, or become more media- or systems-literate. This is in contrast to the conceptualization of games as vehicles for players to acquire information or other traditional curriculum-related skills.

The challenge of a process-centric over an information-centric approach is that it becomes much more difficult to understand exactly what it is that players are learning through games. And even if we can identify what players learn, other dilemmas emerge - for example, are players becoming smarter and more playful from games, or is it that smart and playful people are the ones who are drawn to and benefit from games? Given these questions, what methodologies and approaches can researchers and designers use to better make and study games? Can we measure what games provide to players besides engagement? Should we even try?

This important topic contains a thorny paradox. Without strict methods and concrete outcomes, we can't prove to skeptics that games help players. Yet by continuing to quantify the measurement of games and learning, we are in danger of leaving out the playfulness which lies at the very core of games. Join us for a lively session of debate and discussion as we unpack this debate which is so crucial for the future of games and learning.

Improving Software Development with Games
Speaker(s): Li-Te Cheng (IBM), Robert Musson (Microsoft), John Nordlinger (Microsoft), Steven Rohall (IBM Collaborative User Experience Research Group), Ross Smith (Windows Core Security, Microsoft)
Time: 3-4pm
Three distinct efforts exist at the intersection of games and software developments. This suite of presentations from Microsoft and IBM showcases these efforts and in doing so provides a unique look at the variety of methods that can be applied in serious games towards a particular problem— in this case software development.

In the first presentation, John Nordlinger of Microsoft Research will present a quick overview of Microsoft Research's efforts to utilize game development and programming as part of an effort to improve enrollments in traditional CS degree programs worldwide.

In the second presentation IBM will detail its efforts to combine collaborative development environments, like Rational Jazz with 3D virtual worlds. As teams become more distributed, it is important to support "heads up" work—the kind of social interaction that is achieved by seeing people in the hallways when they are co-located. Can a virtual world foster the sorts of team-building interactions that are common with co-located teams? IBM will demonstrate Bluegrass, a 3D virtual environment integrated with Rational Jazz, and explore how virtual co-location could support a software development team's activities.

In the final presentation members of Microsoft's Core Security Team for Windows will discuss BUG HUNTER—a "games as work" project that started as a basic offline game and is now becoming part of an integrated multiplayer game built into its development tools to foster greater productivity and fun during development and testing cycles.

Often it is hard to understand how games can provide a myriad of solutions to a particular problem space. In this specific session attendees can see games being used in education, recruitment, on-the-job productivity and motivation, team building, and more.

Coffee Break 4-4:10pm

WOLFQUEST
Speaker(s): David T. Schaller (eduweb)
Time: 4:10-4:40pm
WOLFQUEST is an innovative learning game that brings the compelling interactivity of commercial videogames to the field of informal science education. Developed by the Minnesota Zoo and eduweb with funding from the National Science Foundation, WOLFQUEST immerses young people in the social behavior, ecology, and natural history of gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park. Single and multiplayer missions challenge players to hunt, find a mate, establish a territory, and raise pups. The game itself is a catalyst for extended learning on the WOLFQUEST community web site, where players can share strategies, stories, and artwork; chat with wolf experts; and find out where to go see real wolves in zoos and parks.

Make this Game Better: THE REDISTRICTING GAME (Continued)
Speaker(s): Chris Swain (University of Southern California)
Time: 4:40-5:10pm
Please see "Make this Game Better: THE REDISTRICTING GAME (Part I)."

Serious Games Potluck
Time: 5:10-6pm
At the end of the conference, the Serious Games Summit reveals the first ever Serious Games Potluck.  Members of the audience with projects in tow will each be given 5-10 minutes of time to demo to the audience their current or finished serious game project. This exciting finish to the conference offers a unique outlet to the many attendees who often show up with new projects in hand but which aren't otherwise featured on the agenda.

Register for the Serious Games Summit

To register for the Serious Games Summit, you will need to purchase an All Access Pass or Summits and Tutorials Pass.