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PC Games To Help Public Policy Initiatives

Posted by timothy on from the how-about-legislator-doom dept.

Ben Sawyer writes: "The Woodrow Wilson Center's Foresight and Governance Project has published Serious Games: Improving Public Policy through Game-Based Learning and Simulation, a whitepaper. The paper illustrates how government agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can utilize game-based techniques, technologies, and approaches to produce innovative simulations, models, and game-based learning products that enhance public policy decisions. The Woodrow Wilson Center is distributing the paper on-line to a variety of agencies, organizations, and game developers to help foster greater discussion and cooperation between key public policy makers and game developers. Interested readers can find the homepage for the paper here."

5 of 126 comments (clear)

  1. Riiiiiight. by bobetov · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not only is this a brilliant way to get funding for "research" that only a 13-year-old Sims fan could love, but it's clear that they have no idea what they're talking about. A good example:

    "Not only is the game development community at the forefront of PC-based visualization, it is also a leading developer of applied artificial intelligence... blah blah"

    Hahahaha. As a game developer myself, I can tell you exactly how leading edge game AI is. Let's all say it together now... Table Lookups!

    Woohoo. Games are games. Simulations are simulations. Games are fun, simulations are not.

    Bleh.

    --
    Looking for a Rails developer in Chapel Hill?
  2. other good PC games by I+Want+GNU! · · Score: 4, Funny

    Civilizations 3 is another great learning game. It gave me valuable life experience for the next time I have a 6000 year life span and an empire to build. When this occurs, I would like to be the Persians, because their special unit the Immortals will help me conquer competing civilizations. I also have learned that when I conquer foreign cities and they are unhappy, if I simply make them entertainers and they starve for a few turns, the city size decreases and they become happy again.

  3. Um.. by The+Evil+Troll+King · · Score: 4, Funny

    Perhaps public policy makers should stay away from gaming technology. Look what it's done to us. Imagine the headline:

    Orrin Hatch changes name to "DethGod", vows to "V3T0 J00R A$$3$"

    On second thought, that might be kind of cool....

    Steve

  4. Yes! by Odinson · · Score: 4, Funny
    I can finally put my Civilization conquests on my resume!

    --
    Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
  5. SimHealth, real research, goofy name... by tcyun · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Markle is a philanthropic organization that did some work with Maxis quite a few years ago to develope SimHealth. The purpose of the project (as I recall) was to show policymakers the complexity of the environment in which their decisions would be executed. From their website (towards the bottom of the page):

    Markle worked with Maxis and Thinking Tools in 1993 to produce SimHealth, a computer-based simulation of health care policy in the United States.

    I agree that the individual games and the specific examples might seem strange... but think of how strange the concept of a flight simulator (for a real pilot, not for your PC) seemed 25 years ago. Researchers have been spending a great deal of energy attempting to simulate the interactions of a complex world, with a great deal of success. It will only be a matter of time before we have believable (and probabalistically accurate) simulations of some real life situations. (Note that believable is different than predictive, I am attempting to separate the possible outcomes in a simulation separate from what actually happens.)