Serious Games, Serious Questions

Friday, October 29th, 2004

James Pinkerton’s Serious Games, Serious Questions stemmed from his recent visit to the Serious Games Summit:

By preparing for war, do we make war less likely, by deterring enemies, or more likely, by making war seem fun? These thoughts followed me as I attended the Serious Games Summit at the L’Enfant Plaza Hotel, in the shadow of the Federal Triangle in Washington DC. It’s appropriate that the Summit was held here in Powertown, because the goal of the conclave was to push Serious Gaming into Uncle Sam’s consciousness — and wallet.

From the Serious Games Summit site:

The number of non-entertainment games under development is rapidly increasing and demand for the ideas, skills and techniques used in commercial entertainment games is at an all time high. As a result, an entirely new market has emerged.

Serious Games are applications of interactive technology that extend far beyond the traditional videogame market, including: training, policy exploration, analytics, visualization, simulation, education and health and therapy.

The Serious Games Summit gives professionals from the public and private sectors, policymakers, contractors, military personnel, government administrators, educators and experts in the game development arena an opportunity to meet and learn from successful serious games applications, as well as forge links between the traditional videogame industry and program managers for homeland security, state and local governments, military agencies, and educational institutions.

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