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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.
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.
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