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Showing posts from June, 2011

Serious Games Changing The Way People Apply For A Job

Via: Marriott News Center - My Marriott Hotel™ Opens its Doors on Facebook Earlier this month, Marriott International launched My Marriott Hotel Serious Game to help generate interest in hospitality careers. With as many as 50,000 jobs to fill worldwide by the end of the year, Marriott International, Inc. is tapping into the exploding popularity of social media gaming at My Marriott Hotel™ on Facebook , where gamers will first manage a “virtual” hotel restaurant kitchen before moving on to other areas of hotel operations. The game can be played in English, Spanish, French, Arabic and Mandarin. Developed by employer branding and employee engagement specialist Evviva Brands , the Serious Game uses social media platforms to provide insight into the skills needed to manage hotel operations in one of Marriott’s hotels. My Marriott Hotel is similar in concept to the highly popular FarmVille and CityVille games, which have grown to a combined 135 million monthly active

Unschooling Rules – Serious Games As Microcosms For Learning

Clark Aldrich’s  book Unschooling Rules -55 Ways to Unlearn What We Know About Schools and Rediscover Education is as fun to read as playing Serious Games and his list of “55 rules that change our vision for schools” as pragmatic as the author. Rule # 4, addressing 25 critical skills that are seldom taught, tested or graded in high-school such as adapting, analyzing and managing risks, being a leader, building and nurturing relationships, reengineering new actions, gathering evidence, managing conflicts, prioritizing tasks and goals are often developed, and eventually mastered, in the context of video games. President Obama has echoed many of the 55 rules , in his policy shifts on education, including the ideas that standardized testing is NOT an effective way to either drive or measure a child's success, students should focus their time on studying subjects they need or love, learning to do is as critical as learning to know , and knowledge should be expanded through

Game Education Summit Co-locating With Serious Play Conference

Serious Games challenging us to play a better future Following my prior posts First-Ever Serious Play Conference Covers Most Of Serious Games Taxonomy and Call For Speakers: Serious Play Conference, Everything About Serious Games , Serious Play Conference organizers have just announced that the Serious Play Conference and Game Education Summit will be co-locating, giving attendees access to sessions at both conferences.   The events will offer enhanced opportunities for attendees, speakers, exhibitors and sponsors. Here is the full press release. Game Education Summit Re-Scheduled to August 24-25 at DigiPen,   Co-located with the Serious Play Conference SEATTLE, Wash. – June 29, 2011 – Game Education Summit (GES), an annual gathering of faculty from university, college and vocational schools that offer game development courses, has been rescheduled to Wednesday - Thursday, August 24 - 25 at DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, Wash, just outside Seattle.  

Game2Growth To Use Kinect for Windows In Serious Games Apps

Via: Immersive Technology Strategies June Newsletter David Wortley reports, in his monthly Immersive Technology Strategies Newsletter, that Microsoft launched their Kinect Software Development Kit (SDK) for Windows this month at a special event for developers, academics and hobbyists at their UK HQ in Reading on June 21 st . The Microsoft Kinect interface device is already, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the most successful consumer product in history. With its integrated 3D camera and microphone array, it is capable of facial and speech recognition and motion tracking, making it arguably the most powerful natural interface device available today. This SDK is available FREE OF CHARGE for NON-COMMERCIAL use and can be downloaded, along with a significant amount of support material from   http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/kinectsdk/ .   “I see tremendous potential for a whole range of "Serious Games" applications in healthcare and

Potter Champions Transmedia - Serious Games Champion Media in Learning

Via: Confessions Of An Aka-Fan Yesterday, Henry Jenkins posted a must-read article: Three Reasons Why Pottermore Matters… Although his declaration that “all I know is what I read in the newspaper and what I can speculate about within a range of trends impacting social media, transmedia entertainment, Web 2.0, and fan culture”, his post is a masterpiece for transmedia storytelling and niche media enthusiasts. In my view, Transmedia, as "Serious Games", creates different points of entry for different audience segments. Here are the excerpts for Three Reasons Why Pottermore Matters: • Pottermore as Transmedia Storytelling: this may be the most highly visible transmedia project to date. • Harry Potter is a massive mass market success at a time when all of our conversations are focusing on the fragmentation of the media marketplace and the nichification of media production. • The success of Harry Potter demonstrates the power of niche media. Start from the fact t

G4C 2011 -The Case For Serious Games With Social Impact

Via: Huffingtonpost Impact Charles Tsai, journalist, writer, speaker and consultant for social entrepreneurs, states in his recent post covering G4C 2011 that “Businesses of all sizes see potential in making their products more engaging to their customers and have invested accordingly in integrating game mechanics. The social sector, as usual, is lagging behind.” He adds: “The field of Serious Games is still new, not mature enough to provide rock solid proof that games can have profound and sustained social impact.” Jesse Schell’s closing keynote address at this year’s G4C event provides intriguing hard evidence of exactly the opposite, the most compelling one in my view being the following charts that speak for themselves: The below chart shows the escalation of videogames revenues x the decline of violent crimes over the last 15 years The Case for Social Impact Games was also reinforced by a series of case studies shared throughout the event, which inclu

G4C 2011 - Serious Games For Social Good Getting Ubiquitous

Via: Games for Change 8th Annual Festival, New York City, 20-22 June, 2011 As reported by Gamasutra in its yesterday’s post Analysis: The State Of Games For Social Good In 2011,” This year's Games For Change Festival seemed more broadly attended than in past years. With three days of microtalks, workshops and some impressive keynotes, it would seem the event's intended audience -- those interested in the field of applying game design to support real-world activism -- had plenty to chew on”. But Gamasutra also points out the apparent disconnect between “well-intentioned interactive experiences that present or speak to issues, but with limited ability to achieve measurable impact or motivate players to action”. I will try a half-full, as opposed to a half-empty glass, approach, focusing on messages delivered by the event's opening and closing keynote speakers – Al Gore and Jesse Schell. Al Gore Opening Keynote Address “ Games are the new norm for hundre

Serious Games Plug Into The Smart Grid - Gamification Ignites DR

V ia: The Gamification Blog – Battle of the Bulbs In a post published today, Gabe Zichermann reports two great examples of how Serious Games and Gamification provide powerful social incentives to take part in conservation, making a strong statement that “there is an untapped space in the consumer market to roll out these games and make every household into a team fortress of energy savings” (please find also my prior post Serious Games Empowering Energy Efficient Citizens ). The first one is The Battle of the Bulbs - dorms across the University of Chicago competing on who could get the largest decline in energy usage. From a baseline and year-by-year measurements, the school challenged itself to see who could save the most energy”.  The second is a post published this week by smart grid expert, Christine Hertzog, Will Gamification be the Biggest Smart Grid Game Changer ? that sets out a few hypothetical examples where gamification can provide the perfect tools to overc

Gamification@Work: Serious Games Making Brand Messaging Playful

Via: Saatchi & Saatchi S – Engagement Unleashed: Gamification for Business, Brands and Loyalty The above study conducted online by Ipsos OTX Media CT, on behalf of Saatchi & Saatchi S, from May 11 - 17, 2011, has been reproduced at large and reinforces several mega-trends that are converging to profoundly disrupt the industry: Mobile Games, Social Games, Serious Games, & the Gamification of Life. Combined they present an enormous opportunity for businesses, brands and people who have welcome “the notion of weaving fun and play into the fabric of society." The study seeks to identify perspectives, attitudes and key drivers to use games as a vehicle for engagement within the employee context and more broadly across the consumer landscape. According to study data, by some key measures Americans are ready to accept games into some of the most important areas of their lives: ·         Among respondents who are employed, 55% of Americans said they were intereste

Serious Games Wanted! Ideation Challenge RFP

Via: NineSigma, Inc. – Connecting Innovation Seekers and Solution Providers NineSigma, representing a Fortune 500 financial services company (the “Company”), invites ideas for innovative ways to illustrate and reinforce the interrelatedness of physical and financial health, and they are offering up to $10,000 for compelling solutions. The Company’s goal is to educate consumers, leveraging on interactive approaches that promote physical health by showing how it affects financial gain/loss through healthcare costs, spending, savings, etc. (please find also my prior post Serious Games For Healthcare Design Beyond the Hospital and New York Times article - Disruptive Innovation, Applied to Healthcare ). Many businesses promote wellness and maintenance of health as a way of reducing health costs. But the explicit connection between long term health and wealth is not always made. The Company seeks to identify and develop ideas that vividly impress upon the average person the stro