Vicious Engine
Found a news clip (May 17, 2008) about Bob Appleman (from Indiana University) and Vicious Cycle (see below). Well, if VC is really interested in working with academia, I wonder if they would be interested in my project here in Carbondale. I guess it is no harm trying to send them an email and see what comes [...]
IPT
Matthias Spruill (SAIC) sent me an email out of the blue and asked if I would be interested in serving as a member on the IPT team. Well, yeah!
It’s been two/three years now, since I got to know Curtis Conkey, Brent Smith and Kent. Not only are they a very interesting group [...]
Research Interest Group on Video Games/Virtual Worlds
Last December, I initiated a Research Interest Group for Video Games and Virtual Worlds in my institution. We were finally able to meet this month. (Note to self: Spring may not be a good time for this kind of meetings, as we are all busy with reviewing conference proposals, reading thesis/dissertations, and attending conferences).
Our RIG [...]
IBM and Serious Games
The video and computer games are gaining traction in the enterprise and educational arenas as a means to teach new skills to a generation of young adults raised on video games. According to marketing consultancy The Apply Group, between 100 and 135 of the Global Fortune 500 will use gaming for instructional applications by 2012. [...]
Games For Learning Institute (G4LI)
There will be a new Games for Learning Institute (G4LI) in New York University. The institute is a new joint research endeavor of Microsoft Research, New York University, and a consortium of universities, including: Columbia University, the City University of New York (CUNY), Dartmouth College, Parsons The New School for Design, Polytechnic Institute of NYU, [...]
ModSim World conference
Come across a ModSim World Conference: Decision Making in Complex Environment [http://www.modsimworld2008.com] from September 15-18, 2008, at Virginia Beach, VA.
The conference looks to be small to medium size (as compared to AECT and AERA, of course). But I wonder how is it when compared to Ed-Media and E-Learn? No doubt the computer science and engineering [...]
Book Chapter on Game Modding
I have finally sent off the book chapter I co-wrote with JaeHwan Byun for the Gibson-Baek’s book.
Book Title: Digital Simulations for Improving Education
Editors: David Gibson & Young Kyun Baek
Chapter 18 - Making Video Game By Modification (Game Modding): Lesson Learned
Apart from the regular “fix this”, “change that”, I am actually very pleased with the reviewers’ feedback:
There are very [...]
Virtual Hereos & Unreal
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 [...]
Consortium for IDEAS in serious games
Have any new idea for serious games for the coming new year? I have one… currently in the making.
I have made contact with several people to form a new Consortium for IDEAS in Serious Games. Hopefully we will come to some agreement within a couple of weeks and announce the effort. I [...]
Training Project Office (TPO) for gaming
There is simply an incessant stream of news about the military and serious games! Wow!
Moreover, the Army are coming up with new projects to serious looking at this new training technology. Interactive Entertainment Today reported that the US Army has founded a new project office for games that focuses on training simulators.
The new project office, [...]
Serious Games research lab
I believe it was September 2004 when I first approached the School of Mass Communication and Media Arts to seek possibility in working towards having a “Serious Games degree at the place where I work, but the amount of red tapes involved in the process is simply unbelievable, especially when it is bottoms-up. This kind [...]
Neverwinter Nights for military
It was at I/ITSEC 2007 that I first heard about Shawn A. Weil from the folks from Aptima, Inc. (Woburn, MA). It appeared that Aptima (or should I say Weil?) also worked on Neverwinter Nights for a little bit, and had presented their papers at past I/ITSEC (2004/2005).
It looks like they have been busy:
Alexander, A. [...]
I/ITSEC 2007 (Orlando, FL)
My participation in the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation & Education Conference (I/ITSEC) 2007 was more chance than planned. I had seen an advertisement for Serious Games Challenge on the Serious Games listserv, and decided to go for it. After two months of hardwork, we finally had a completed mod for submission… and it came in as [...]
Delta3D: OS Game Engine
Well, it was at best a random encounter. It started with a listserv posting on members’ opinion of the Top 3 serious games, and Jim Brazell (UTAustin) said, amongst a list of games/software:
Delta 3D – because to me the most serious game simulation is building games. This is the path to human development for Mars [...]
Serious Games on Mobile platforms
Ambient Insight predicted that mobile educational gaming (what a term ) will grow from $57 million (current) to reach $185 million by 2012, at a compound growth rate of 26.5% in the span of the next 5 years).
By Educational Gaming, their definition not only claimed the edutainment suspects (preK-12), but also higher institutes and [...]
Playing to Learn
The Murphy Winter Report (2005/2006) ran an article about Kathleen Hansen and Nora Paul of University of Minnesota using NWN for Journalism. (I have known about someone using NWN for journalism for quite sometime now, but it keep slipping my mind as to who the researchers are… Now I won’t forget.)
Original article: http://sjmc.umn.edu/mreporter/winter2005/neverwinter.html
(Excerpt… ) NWN [...]
Serious Games Challenge
After two months of planning and several weeks of crazy coding/scripting, my research team has finally put together a game for the 2nd Annual Serious Games Challenge and Showcase at I/ITSEC. I must say I learned a lot. Before, I was able to put together a story, and even build the set. But when it [...]
Making the News
Kathryn Jaehnig did a write up for CILR’s Information Trails research team today. The article was printed in today’s Southern Illinoisan newspaper.
Headline: Computer Games May Help with Class Work
ID: 19394578.doc
Author: Kathryn Jaehnig
Approx. number of words: 687
CARBONDALE – Some day, in the not-so-distant future in a school not far away, students may claim that a dragon [...]
Assessment & Results of Serious Games
The Game Developer Conference will soon be here (March 5-9, 2007). Although serious games initiative is relatively young (3 years?), the assessment aspect of serious games is obvious an important topic. Below are this year’s run down of the Assessment and Result track in the Serious Game Summit (SGS) section:
Erasing The Delta: Creating Games Where [...]
CGames 2007, Louisville, KY
10th International Conference on Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Educational & Serious Games (Call For Paper)
25th-28th July 2007.
Galt House Hotel, Louisville, KY.
The International Conference on Computer Games: AI, Animation, Mobile, Educational & Serious Games organised by The University of Wolverhampton, England, is one of the leading research conferences devoted to the advancement of the theory [...]
NWN Modding: West Notts College, UK
West Nottinghamshire College at Mansfield, UK has been modding NWN since 2005. Those of us who followed the Bioware’s Wednesday newsletter would have read about their educational NWN project at one time or another.
The project has also been reported in the news, here’s one write-up, and here’s another. On Jan 12, 2007, BBC News released [...]
Assessment and Digital Game-Based Learning
Although the following quotes are from an older article: Game Plan, from Technology and Learning (Vol 26, No. 3), some of the problems faced in implementing games in education remain relevant… (sadly, this means nothing much has changed since 2005). The full article can be found here: Techlearning (October 15, 2005)
Educators are on the brink [...]
