"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."

Comments

in other news from 1983

[Trepidity]

Apple Computer and Scholastic Inc. are pleased with the inroads "educational games" have been making in K-12 education, and argue that intelligently designed games can be both entertaining and educational, and usefully supplement the traditional curriculum, especially in terms of engagement.

(And seriously, a lot of those games were better than the kind of stuff in that Cisco game arcade.)

Re:in other news from 1983

[Monkeedude1212]

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.

Re:in other news from 1983

[MBCook]

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.

Re:Serious Game = Sim?

[dave562]

The level of realism and computing power available to the simulator is what sets it apart from a game. A game at D&Bs is going to be focused on fun. You'd be able to put the airplane through all sorts of fun and exciting manuveurs that would tear the wing off of a real plane. A simulator is going to be focused entirely on making a reproduction of the real thing that is as accurate as possible. The purpose of a simulator is to train a pilot to fly a multi-million dollar airplane without destroying it. The purpose of a video game is to provide some entertaiment and a momentary escape from reality.

Re:Well, duh. This is news?

[Lord_of_the_nerf]

You're right. We've had serious, realistic games for years. Just many of the situations haven't come up yet.

But when the Zerg come, we'll be ready.

Re:Serious Game = Sim?

[kestrel bait]

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.

What's New?

[qpawn]

Games have always had serious real world applications. Pitfall! for the Atari 2600 was used by the Boy Scouts of America to demonstrate survival tactics in the wild. Throughout the United States, Super Mario Bros. is still considered essential training for elite plumbers. In recent years, Call of Duty has saved the military millions of dollars in automated weapons costs by relying solely on long range knife throws.

Re:Serious Game = Sim?

[icebraining]

I hear the KA-50 Black Shark simulator is pretty close.

Rigid body dynamics equations have been used to calculate the helicopter's flight trajectory. In essence, this means that all external forces and force momentums are used to calculate a body's position and rotation in 3-D space.

The Ka-50 airframe aerodynamic properties are derived from its sub-element parameters: fuselage, wings, tail, and landing gear. Each of these has its own position and orientation within the airframe local-coordinate system and each has their own aerodynamic characteristics. Each sub-element is calculated by independent lift-drag coefficients diagrams, damage degree influencing the lift properties, and center of gravity (CG) position and inertial characteristics. Aerodynamic forces acting on each sub-element of the airframe are calculated separately in their own coordinate system taking into account local airspeed of the sub-element.

Then it continues to describe each system (rotors, hydraulics, electrical, etc) and how it simulates each one.

Re:Fun

[__aagctu1952]

Oh hey, a /. topic where I have first-hand knowledge!

But are these "serious games" fun to play? That seems to be the most overlooked part of educational games.

They don't have to be. You're confusing serious games with edutainment - the latter is entertainment with an educational value (even if it, as you pointed out, quite often fails at the "entertainment" bit), while the former is basically education in the form of a game. Think "military war game" compared to "chess". Different aims, different audience. A lot of serious games would actually be called simulators, if that word hadn't carried so much semantic baggage with it.
The project I'm involved in, aimed at firefighters and other rescue workers, is intended to be an replacement for and complement to certain live (and therefore dangerous and expensive) exercises, for example. That means it's meant to be played with instructors present, as part of their normal education regime. Thus, there's no need to "sell" the game with entertainment. Trainees can practice on their own if they want to (PC-based software), but if they do, they do it for the sake of their own education.

Anyway, if anyone's interested in the subject I can recommend the freely available
From Gaming to Training: A Review of Studies on Fidelity, Immersion, Presence, and Buy-in and Their Effects on Transfer in PC-Based Simulations and Games. It's DARPA-funded (DARWARS - I love that name!) so it's aimed at military educational gaming, but it's a good introduction to the field.

Re:Fun

[Kingrames]

I fail to understand your question. What could not be fun about a fully realistic simulation of the inner workings of the reproductive system of the Liturgusidae?