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"Serious Games" Industry Gains Traction

Posted by Soulskill on from the insert-serious-business-joke-here dept.

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."

5 of 92 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Serious Game = Sim? by dave562 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  2. Re:Well, duh. This is news? by Lord_of_the_nerf · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  3. What's New? by qpawn · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  4. Re:Serious Game = Sim? by icebraining · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    Dilbert RSS feed
  5. Re:Fun by __aagctu1952 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.