The interview of Virtual Heroes by Serious Games Source yielded some good information about what VH planned on doing to further their “learning with video game” technology and in making a name for their company. They have developed an assessment component called “Advance Learning Technology” for use with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine (VH licensed the U3 as their in-house game development tool).
SGS: Why choose the Unreal Engine?
VH: Our team has worked extensively on the America’s Army game project. Because of this experience, we have seen the power of Unreal technology as it is used in the serious games space for strategic messaging and training and education applications. Many of our clients are asking for UE3 technology by name…
[So, AA was powered by Unreal? I am skeptical about the next sentense, how may education application out there are powered by Unreal? Honestly, I haven't heard of any. Name please?]
By leveraging COTS (commercial-off-the-shelf) technologies, we can focus on challenges specific to serious games. These include the creation of instructor authoring tools, after-action-review technologies, the integration of biometrics and human physiology engines and SCORM compliance etc.
We feel that our arrangement with Epic provides us with a competitive advantage in the serious games market. This approach will enable us to creative premium immersive experiences which provide the means to train and educate while measuring task related skills-proficiency along the way.
SGS: Recently the engine has come under scrutiny over its complexity and alleged support issues. Does this concern your company in developing future serious games and other learning products?
VH: Not at all. We’ve been part of the Unreal Developer network since January 2004 when we began developing for the America’s Army game project. We chose UE3 in large part because of helpful support available from UDN.
[Ah! So Unreal was difficult to use and perhaps have many bugs. It appeared that UDN will handle all the problems related to Unreal engine.]
SGS: Can you give us some examples of the types of products that Virtual Heroes will look to develop using this technology?
VH: We will use UE3 for our Advanced Learning Technology (A.L.T.) platform. We are currently developing HumanSim for medical education and training. We are also developing Virtual Astronaut for STEM education and SIMWARS for Federal Systems training. We will be building applications to “open standards” established by the DoD like DIS/HLA, SCORM, OneSaf etc.
[The military is certainly driving SCORM. So any games that wish to make it into the military playground will have to be SCORM compliant, too. This has been proven in I/ITSEC.]
SGS: How with UE3 be integrated into the Advanced Learning Platform? How will this platform be bettered through this middleware?
VH: UE3 will enable us to accelerate the creation of the A.L.T. platform and focus on the mission-critical challenges for serious games related to instructor authoring, after-action-reviews, linkages to learning management systems, AI, SCORM.
[Finally, here's the meat! But somehow, I get the naggy feeling that they are trying to make ALT the name in serious games. (You know, Tylenol (instead of analgesic), BandAid (instead of plaster), and Advance Learning Technology (instead of serious games). Why? They refer to themselves as maker of serious games and/or advance learning technologies.
While they are the maker of Advanced Learning Technology (name of a software application), they are not maker of advance learning technologies. What are the advance learning technologies out there? Nothing... unless, you rename instructional technologies as learning technologies.... The "advanced" part is obviously pointing to digital games.]
