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Serious Games Showcase & Challenge - 2008 Winners

GeoCommander - Best Government Game

Via: The Official Website Of The Third Annual I/ITSEC Serious Games Showcase & Challenge - Cutting-Edge Applications Win the I/ITSEC 2008

High School, Military and Commercial Serious Games Developers Take Contest To New Levels with STEM, Medical and Military Applications

Following my previous posts
Serious Games Showcase & Challenge 2008 and Serious Games Showcase & Challenge 2008 - Call For Entries, The Interservice/Industry Training Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) is proud to announce the winners of the 2008 competition.

The 2008 challenge saw a dramatic growth fueled by the industry sponsorship of Autodesk, Adobe, SAIC, Presagis, the Lockheed Martin Virtual Worlds Lab, DISTI, D&SCI, Mymic, ECS, VMASC, Hewlett Packard, and NTSA, and produced an entrant field that nearly tripled the previous years.

After a multi-step evaluation process, the top 12 entries in three categories were selected for showcasing at the annual I/ITSEC conference from Dec 1-4 2008 in Orlando, Florida.

The finalists displayed a wide variety of serious game applications for all skill levels and backgrounds including: vehicle maintenance, geo-location, preventive medicine, emergency response management, environmental management, creature identification in a natural habitat, chemical interactions, ancient civilizations, and urban warfare.

The finalists were eligible for five awards: Best Overall Serious Game, Best Small Business Serious Game, Best Government Serious Game and Best Student Serious Game, selected by a panel of nearly 50 distinguished serious game experts from academia, government, and industry.

In addition, there was one award -- The People's Choice Award – which was determined by votes cast by the 17,800 attendees of the I/ITSEC conference itself.


The winner of both the Overall Best Serious Game and Best Small Business Game was Burn Center, developed by 360Ed.


Burn Center is a fast-paced, medically-accurate simulation of a mass-casualty disaster involving multiple burn victims. Developed to electronically recreate established medical procedures and tactics, it follows patients over the course of 36 hours of treatment in an intensive care unit.

The winner of the Best Government Game was GeoCommander, developed by Intelligence Gaming for the US Navy's PAWARSYSCOM's PEO C4I, PMW 120.



U.S. Navy SPAWAR Systems Command, Program Executive Office GeoCommander was built from the ground up as a Serious Game solution to address the problem of accurate Geo Location of hostile forces supporting the Global War on Terror.


GeoCommander uses an advanced competitive gaming simulation technology to address both the "How" at the conceptual level (rather than system-specific functionality) - and the "Why" in an immersive, intellectual and challenging learning environment to address the most intractable geo-location operator shortfalls prevalent today.

The winner of Best Student Game was Age of Ecology developed by High School interns Alexander Wein of Palo Alto, California and Carl Jackson of Andover, Maryland while working as interns at the United States Geologic Survey. As part of their award package, Wein and Jackson each received a copy of Adobe® Director® 11 and Autodesk® 3ds Max® 2009.

Age of Ecology is inspired by the environmentally non-sustainable aspects of existing strategy games. Players buy and zone lands, invest in the productive capacities of land use, and mitigate natural hazards like floods and earthquakes. Through the addition of population, infrastructure and capitalistic development they generate pollution and revenues. The goal is to find the optimal balance between industrial capacity and the needs of the environment.

The winner of the People's Choice Award was Canadian Forces: Direct Action, developed by the Army Learning Support Center, Canadian Armed Forces.


Canadian Forces Direct Action is a tactical first person shooter that accurately mimics the real world rules of engagement of the Canadian Army.

Real-world Canadian weaponry and tactical aids such as flash-bang grenades and pepper spray are used to carry out missions in the simulated urban environments which have been created to accurately represent real-world locations using geo-location data.

Direct Action is a mod of the commercial game SWAT4.

LEVELS

A variety of custom levels has been created to address various training needs of CF and allied training establishments.



Bordertown Slums


Bus Station Level


Operation Daybreak


Desert Operations


Woodland Grow Op


Dodge City at CFB Gagetown


University Level


The 2009 Serious Games Showcase & Challenge will be held at /ITSEC in Orlando FL from November 30 - 3 December 2009. The game submission deadline is 15 September 2009.