FUTURE-MAKING SERIOUS GAMES

Serious Games creating lifelike experiences in 3D Via: 3DVIA 3DVIA is the newest of the 6 Dassault Systèmes brands. As a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, Dassault Systèmes brings value to more than 100,000 customers in 80 countries. A pioneer in the 3D software market since 1981, Dassault Systèmes develops and markets PLM application software and services that support industrial processes and provide a 3D vision of the entire lifecycle of products from conception to maintenance. The Dassault Systèmes portfolio consists of CATIA for designing the virtual product - SolidWorks for 3D mechanical design - DELMIA for virtual production - SIMULIA for virtual testing - ENOVIA for global collaborative lifecycle management, and 3DVIA for online 3D lifelike experiences. 3DVIA extends 3D to new users, businesses and consumers in order to create new communities with 3D as the common language. With its open web services-based architecture, it enables high-

Via: 3D Web Convention Official Site - 4+ Events 2 Days 1 Place Leading The 3D Web Debate Following my prior post Apply Group: Serious Games Events Being Assembled For 2008 , the 3D Web Convention Schedule is now available, and brings together 4 conferences all addressing the next-gen Web, to be held in in London 9-10th July. A packed 2-day convention incorporating Serious Games, Virtual Worlds, brands, social networking + extra legal clinic sessions - all addressed from effective development through to monetization. Convention Schedule 9th July 3D Web Academic & Research Summit Monetize Web 2.0 & Social Networks Conference Expo & Live Demos 10th July Apply Serious Games Conference Apply Virtual Worlds & MMOs Conference Expo & Live Demos Serious Games Legal Clinic Sessions 3D Web Academic & Research Summit shows the opportunities that are near-term whilst exploring ways to address the acknowledged skills deficit for the e

Via: Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) - Games-Based Learning One of the main problems associated with the perception of games as learning tools is that observers generally do not look past the surface content of the game, the graphics, the animations and the sounds. As a result people fail to see or become aware of the rich learning environments and experiences that game play can offer. In order to try and identify what learning takes place when children play games Marc Prensky developed his What kids learn that's positive from playing video games . Consolarium, the LTS's Scottish Centre for Games and Learning, interprets his model so that relevance to teaching and learning can be made more explicit and accessible to teachers. One of the ways the Consolarium is using games in teaching and learning is to ‘retro-fit’ commercial off the shelf (COTS) games to help create motivating contexts that will engage learners. Be it using a narrative driven interactive stor

Via: Edutopia by Sara Bernard To the excitement of many youngsters, computer and video games have entered the educational playing field. Research increasingly supports the cognitive benefits of such games -- not to mention the fact that most kids today are already playing them and loving them -- and now educators and game designers are finding new and exciting ways to embed curricular content into complex yet fascinating play environments. On the other hand, critics charge that the games' educational benefits have not been clearly established. Furthermore, competitiveness and the use of hierarchical scoring systems can compromise engagement for some students, and video gaming at school reinforces the digitized and sedentary lifestyle many young people already experience at home. Would you, or do you, use digital games in the classroom? Are computer and video games effective teaching tools? Current Status Yes. Computer and video games engage, motivate, and inspire students, and

Via: Learning & Teaching Scotland A GROUNDBREAKING study looking at the impact of a brain training computer game on learning is to be extended across Scotland. Learning and Teaching Scotland, the body responsible for the development of the curriculum and for exploring the use of ICT in education, is to widen its research project looking at the effect of Nintendo's More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima on pupils' maths ability. More than 900 pupils and 32 schools across the country will be involved in the project, which will begin in April 2008. A small-scale study carried out with P5-P6 pupils in Dundee's St Columba's Primary School by LTS last year found a daily dose of the computer game helped improve pupils' attainment in maths and their concentration and behaviour levels. The pupils were given a maths test at the beginning and then they used More Brain Training from Dr Kawashima on the Nintendo DS for 20 minutes at the start of each day

Via: G ames Alfresco - Top 10 Augmented Reality Demos That Will Revolutionize Serious Games Ori Inbar is the founder of Pookatak Games - a video game company; formerly senior vice president at SAP , and eternally passionate about interactive entertainment, he also shares my passion for Augmented Reality Games. In his Blog, Games Alfresco, he introduces his countdown of the top 10 best AR demos poised to revolutionize video games - the pursuit of the ultimate augmented reality game.  There is one company in particular I would like to further explore, which is probably the most commercially successful company that specializes in augmented reality. Since 2003, Total Immersion has been funded by two leading global venture capital firms: Partech International and I Source Gestion. A recent round of financing, mid 2006, brought in a new investing partner, Elaia Partners, specialized in software and IT services sectors. For more than 5 years, TOTAL IMMERSION has investe

Via: Slate - An Ingenious Video Game That Looks Like It Was Designed By A Third-Grader Crayon Physics Deluxe , from Kloonigames, is a 2D physics puzzle game, in which you get to experience what it would be like if your drawings would be magically transformed into real physical objects. Solve puzzles with your artistic vision and creative use of physics. Crayon Physics Deluxe lets you draw objects on the screen by clicking and dragging your mouse, or by drawing with the stylus of a tablet PC, as in the below video. The objects you scrawl become part of the game world. The goal is to create objects that propel a crudely drawn ball toward a crudely drawn star. There is no single correct way to scoot that ball around; the fun is in exploring the options. Within seconds of hitting start, you're furiously scribbling blocks and ramps and wedges and seesaws, whatever it takes to reach the goal. Some players may get sidetracked creating hilariously inefficient Rube Goldberg devi

Via: Insolita Studios Game du Jour is the first “One Deal a Day” website for indie and casual PC games. Every day of the week, GameDuJour.com sells one popular downloadable game at a steep discount. But the clock is ticking and each deal expires at the end of the day. Visitors to GameDuJour.com can download today’s game, try it and buy it at a big discount until midnight Central Time. Then it’s a whole new game — the clock is reset and another game is available at a bargain price. To foster relationships between gamers and spur communication, Game du Jour offers a community area in which anyone can join in the fun of discussing the current game and sharing tips and tricks. Game du Jour, a Silicon Valley start-up founded in 2006, is a marketing and distribution partner to game developers, giving those companies the opportunity for a rush of sales and heightened brand exposure during their products’ 24-hour lifecycle at GameDuJour.com. Philippe Piernot, Ph.D is the owner at Gam

  PRESS RELEASE Orlando, FL - March 20, 2008 The Future of Collaboration: Virtual Worlds Integrated With Unified Communications IBM and Forterra Systems are working to solve an age-old problem that challenges U.S. security and costs taxpayers millions. Forterra plans to develop a futuristic unified communications solution code-named "Babel Bridge" that could allow US intelligence agencies to use a common graphical collaboration system to instantly communicate within a virtual world. To meet this challenge, IBM and Forterra have entered into a teaming agreement under which Forterra will integrate its On-Line Interactive Virtual Environment (OLIVE™) 3D platform with the IBM Lotus® Sametime® software and the IBM Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC2™) platform. The new system would give online collaborators instant insight through the display and discussion of multiple data forms in parallel including documents, graphic displays, and human expertise via

Press Release: Barcelona, Spain - March 20, 2008 SLanguages 2008 is a 24 hour multilingual conference to celebrate and investigate the use of 3D virtual worlds for language education. The conference will be held within Second Life allowing the participants to exchange ideas and share experiences simultaneously around the world. The online conference is free to attend and includes talks, workshops, discussions and posters on language education using virtual worlds such as Second Life. The events will cover methodologies, teaching tools and experiences. Throughout 2007 Second Life has become an important tool for language learning with many universities using the 3D world for language tuition, including Michigan State University and the University of Southampton . “Interest in using Second Life for education has increased exponentially over the last year” says Second Life educational consultant Gavin Dudeney, author of The Internet and the Language Classroom, Longman 2007.

Richard Carey’s has just posted a great article - Extreme Growth , which highlights some of the hard numbers behind the subscription growth of current MMOGs from the MMOG Chart updated website. Leveraging on his posting, I would like to further explore the possibilities of Massively Multiplayer Online Game space for the proliferation of advanced learning communities. As Joel Foreman, an associate professor of English at George Mason University, states “this is not a theoretical model for the distant future of education: millions of people are engaging voluntarily at this advanced level right now in MMOG virtual. They are collectively learning their way into an unpredictable cyberspace future. At the same time they are creating a model of a high performance collaborative learning system that could eventually replace the bricks and mortar of the nineteenth century model that Americans currently pay $500 plus billion per year to maintain". Anecdotal evidence comes from U

Via: FLUX - Cyber University On A Mobile Phone? In April last year, Japan’s first so-called Cyber University opened its virtual doors. The university is private and headquartered in Fukuoka on the southern island of Kyuushu. It is run by a nonlisted stock company called Japan Cyber Education Institute which is mainly controlled by Japanese Internet telecom giant SoftBank . As of now, approximately 1,900 students are enrolled who can graduate with a Bachelor degree in IT and business or world heritage. All correspondence-type courses can be accessed via the Internet. While this is a cool idea especially for homemakers, ambitious people with stressing day jobs and retirees, it’s not really new. There are many universities offering academic material online and Japan’s Cyber University is not even the first fully online academic institution in the world. Courses Via The Mobile Phone. In November last year however, the Cyber University took its concept one

Via: PSP World - Homework Goes Handheld with PLATO Achieve Now PLATO Learning launches first-ever educational content for PSP (Play Station Portable) handheld entertainment system. Homework Meets Gaming with PLATO Achieve Now on PSP For kids in the digital age, it's a familiar refrain, "no video games until you finish your homework." But what happens when homework is a video game? PLATO Learning, Inc., a leading provider of K-adult computer-based and e-learning solutions, is forever changing the definition of "homework." The company announced last week it is first to market in North America with educational gaming software for Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.'s PSP(R) (PlayStation(R)Portable)--selling its popular PLATO Achieve Now program on one of the hottest-selling handheld entertainment systems beginning this April. PLATO Achieve Now delivers research-based educational content as a series of fun, interactive games, which are prove