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"Serious Games" Industry Gains Traction
schliz writes "So-called 'serious games' are gaining traction in military, business, education, and medical applications as Gen X and Y come into power, iTnews reports. While game developers acknowledge the risk of trivializing real-world issues (as in the Six Days in Fallujah controversy), intelligently designed 'serious games' could allow complex situations to be presented in a simple way. Cisco, for example, has an amusing online games arcade that prepares networking professionals for a variety of certifications."
There is a difference between Educational and Serious. I do not take Bobo the mathematical Monkey counting bananas as serious.
I do take seriously the simulation of what war is really like overseas in countries that experience the real blunt end of it. Civilian casualties, oppression, vulgar and obscene acts of violence. These are the kinds of things that have been a little taboo for video games, because the idea has always been to make a game fun, not realistic. The real world isn't fun, and now they are making games that aren't, to prepare people for the harshness.
Thats basically what they are getting at, not the whole education part.
The difference is fidelity. Simulators strive for real-world emulation. Educational sim games abstract away a lot of details and will have lower fidelity. The purpose is often to get familiar with basic cause/effect within an environment in which the player can win or lose and experience a variety of situations. Sim games also tend to contrive the virtual world to present conflict and entertainment. I build CyberCIEGE, which most definitely is NOT a real-world simulation of network security. However it is a constructive management simulation that confronts players with choices that lead to learning. And, for at least some students, it is fun.
All games are, at their heart, games. As in, some players follow some rules in an attempt to best each other. In computer games, the computer can create the effect of having more opponents whether that be by adding fake names and scores to the high scores table (as in Tiger Woods Golf, for example) or by using an AI routine to control a character in the game in much the same way a human would. Every game has players competing to best each other.
All sims are, at their heart, sims. They seek to recreate some (usually real life) situation as accurately as possible. What is created my not be fun to interact with. It may not be challenging either. But it is, presumably, useful to whoever created it. Flying an F-16 for real involves a lot of boring stuff that most people aren't interested in but fighter pilots still need to learn and practice it. Some people enjoy playing with simulations for fun and a lot of flight sims genuinely deserve the moniker.
Sim City was sometimes called a toy rather than a game, as it lacked opponents to best. Because, although it leant towards simulation at times, it strived first and foremost to be fun. But it had a score - money, population, etc. and it had many players. And those players could communicate with each other and compare scores and thus it became a game. But it does leave this third classification - sims which are not designed to be realistic, simply interesting. Conway's life comes under this heading. So it's not an entirely clear-cut distinction.
I'd agree. I was quite impressed with Full Spectrum Warrior. You run your little squad of 4 guys around in Iraq (yeah, it had a fake name). But you'd run them around with tactical commands and you had to be really careful. One stupid move and your whole group had been taken out by and RPG. Forget to use cover fire and a guy is shot down and you have to go get him and drag him for the rest of the mission or back to the med truck at the start. The game was really a RTS/squad hybrid of sorts.
The game was developed for the military as a training sim, and made less punishing and realistic for civilians. If you dared (I didn't), you could put the game in full military mode which was much much more difficult.
It had a story, and it was fun to play, but it gave you a real sense of just how dangerous and hard that kind of anti-insurgency close quarters combat could be in a way that traditional FPS games don't.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Can we finally stop acting like the games industry helping sell/train the military is a good or acceptable thing? It's truly shameful that the art of games is used to purposely aid real-world killing and it's time the community stands up to it.
Property is theft.