The future of self-improvement is in games

June 26, 2008 — Daniel

CasualGaming.biz has an interview with Marie Marquis, the nutritionist who consulted for UbiSoft on My Health Coach. She argues that games may be better than books and/or videos for promoting self-improvement. The ability to set short term goals with the minimum of information/discussion is one strength. Having a more personal one-to-one interaction is another:

We can use technology to give challenges to the players to change their behaviour – without them feeling that a figure of authority is prescribing anything.

The challenges in My Health Coach show what people can handle in daily life and are clearly accessible to them. If the challenge is ‘tomorrow, I will eat vegetables at dinner’, that becomes part of their life – in a way, their life in an extension of the game.

Posted in Education, Games Based Learning. Tags: , . No Comments »

Edutainment for the masses

June 23, 2008 — Daniel

Proof (if any was needed) that commercial serious gaming is here hit me last night when I saw adverts for UbiSoft’s My Health Coach on television – a Nintendo DS game that comes with its own pedometer! The ‘game’ advises you on your diet and daily exercise, providing advice and encouragement to keep a healthier lifestyle. From a series of My Coach ‘games’ that include the likes of My Word Coach (improve your word-power) and My Life Coach (improve everything, presumably).

Meantime, global games publishing giant Electronic Arts are taking the (apparently well known in the US) Brain Quest school curriculum based card decks to DS -

Brain Quest is EA Casual Entertainment’s first educational game and we are thrilled to bring this beloved brand into the videogame space,” said Robert Nashak, VP of Casual Studios, EA Casual Entertainment. “By adapting the series to the DS, we are able to reach today’s tech savvy children and provide them with an educational experience that is interactive, engaging, and fun.

I don’t think anyone would have predicted this Dr Kawashima effect – educational games are now fully part of the mainstream. That didn’t take long…

Posted in Education, Games Based Learning, Play, Technology. Tags: , , , . 2 Comments »

Root of all (modern) evil? Alcohol or GTA IV?

June 23, 2008 — Daniel

(Found this in my box of draft posts… )

When GTA IV was launched – going on sale at midnight on a Monday night – the launch was marred by a stabbing incident. This confirms that GTA IV is somewhere near the root of evil according to the Daily Mail and Keith Vaz.

MCV took the time to get some witness statements, and found that perhaps drunkenness and general loutishness was more to blame – with quite possibly no connection to GTA IV at all at all!

Posted in Play. Tags: . No Comments »

Digital Interactive Symposium: Edinburgh

June 23, 2008 — Daniel

The second Digital Interactive Symposium: Edinburgh (DIS:E)

When: August 12, 2008: 14:00 – 18:00
Where: Edinburgh Intenational Conference Center

This year’s symposium will be co-located with the Edinburgh Interactive Festival at the prestigious Edinburgh International Conference Center.

The purpose of DIS:E is to create a dialogue between practitioners, thinkers and policymakers, to discuss issues concerning the interactive entertainment industries now and in the future.

This year the focus on DIS:E will be on education and training.
- What skills and knowledge does future developers and artists need?
- What is the purpose of academic training?
- Are we educating artists for self-expression, or should the needs of the industry be imperative?
- How can innovation be fostered by educational institutions? And what should the relationship between academia and industry be like?

As the Scottish government has recently announced it is placing game design and development on the national curriculum, what impact may this have on the interactive entertainment industries in the future?

Keynote Speaker: Professor Richard Bartle.

Posted in Communication, Education, Game Development. Tags: . No Comments »

Copy-oh-so-very-wrong

June 21, 2008 — Daniel

Wintermute is a free game-engine for creating your own point-and-click style adventure games (not the only one mind) which came to my attention via an involved story. What happens when three friends decide to make an adventure game but don’t realise that copyright applies to images screen-grabbed from other games? Limbo of the Lost is what happens.

In turns hilarious, awful, and a touch of the tragic (with an outsourced music composer worried about how the art plagiarism could affect his future prospects), follow the full story as it develops over time here, or skip to the review of the finished product.

Every year we tell our students to avoid using copyright material in their own game demos – and for the most part students do avoid copyright materials, if only so they can post their games online for free download (as part of their portfolio) without worries about infringing rights.

On the plus side, this might provide a lot more attention for Wintermute – while on the negative side it might result in publishers being even less keen to agree to distribute small indie adventure games.

Posted in Game Development. Tags: , . No Comments »

Skills shortage hits games firms

June 18, 2008 — Daniel

From the BBC article of the same name, and further discussion on the Develop magazine website.

The UK games industry is claiming a skills shortage is impairing growth. While there has been a huge growth of games development degrees, David Braben claims that

95% of video gaming degrees are simply not fit for purpose. Without some sort of common standard, like Skillset accreditation, these degrees are a waste of time for all concerned.

(An opportune moment for me to mention that the course here at UWS is one of only four courses to have that Skillset accrediation… and that at least 3 of the small cohort of 9 students due to graduate next month have already accepted job offers)

Meanwhile I have to agree with Dan Hodgson of Northumbria when he notes that:

We do have people who don’t have the right mindset. We consistently tell them that this is one of the hardest courses we offer at this university. It’s certainly not for the sort of people who want to laze around and play games for three years.

Which is perhaps why we have a small graduating class – many of our students transfer to other courses which demand less technical and mathematical skills part way through the degree. The problem is not likely to be easy to fix, with the (noted elsewhere) decline in maths and physics in schools. Hopefully this is a trend that can be reversed.

Posted in Education, Game Development, Game Development Based Learning, Technology. Tags: . 1 Comment »

SL vs. WoW

June 17, 2008 — Daniel

On Friday I attended the Second Life v. World of Warcraft workshop at the London Knowledge Lab, which turned out pretty well and gave me a chance to catch up on a range of work. The title for the day was slightly tongue in cheek, asking us to consider the relative merits of SL vs those of WoW for learners – though the debate did heat up after one well placed question!
Highlights below…

(more…)

Posted in Education, Second Life, Technology, Virtual Worlds. Tags: . No Comments »

Branded for Virtual Life

June 17, 2008 — Daniel

Continuing developments in the continuing efforts to turn virtual playgrounds into spaces every bit as brand sensitive as real school playgrounds…

Millions of Us has launched a new company to specialise in creating branded goods for virtual worlds.

The Barbie Girls subscription service is now live. Subscribers get exclusive content and get to wear tiaras to help mark them out, and presumable to lord it over the non-subscribers. After all, why launch a subscription service if non-subscribers can’t be easily identified and mocked by those whose parents can pay? I may be being a little bit cynical here, but this seems to be a deliberate tactic to leverage the power of the ‘in-clique’.

Posted in Play, Virtual Worlds. Tags: . No Comments »

Second Call for Papers: ReLIVE08

June 5, 2008 — Daniel

Second Call ReLIVE08

The Open University is pleased to announce a second call for abstract submissions for the international conference for Researching Learning in Virtual Environments to be held at its campus in Milton Keynes on the 20th and 21st of November 2008.
If you are currently researching learning in a virtual world, for example There, CyberTown, Second Life etc, then we invite you to submit an abstract to ReLIVE08. We are seeking presenters and participants who have experience of designing and delivering learning in virtual worlds, and the ability to reflect on and share that experience within an analytical framework. Please note that the closing date for the second call is the 20th of June.

With researchers and practitioners attending from around the globe, this excellent opportunity for networking promises an interesting, stimulating and exciting 2 days. The conference will begin with a reception on the evening of the 19th November, and the first full day will see the opening keynote from Edward Castranova and an invited panel debate chaired by Sara De Freitas, Director of Research at The Serious Games Institute, as well as a varied programme of paper presentations and workshops. The conference gala reception and dinner will be supported by a variety of entertainers, including a digital caricaturist, live music and an after dinner speaker (details to be announced shortly), and the second day of presentations and workshops will be wrapped up by Roo Reynolds. All delegates will receive a conference goodie bag and an electronic copy of the conference proceedings. Selected papers will be invited to submit chapters for an edited book with a major publisher in the field (tbc).

Please find more details at our website on http://www.open.ac.uk/relive08

We hope to see you in November.

Posted in Call for Papers, Education, Second Life, Technology, Virtual Worlds. Tags: . 2 Comments »

A billion virtual world users… 10 years from now

June 5, 2008 — Daniel

From Game Daily. Analysts ‘Strategy Analytics’ forecast a staggering billion virtual world users ten years from now. If we are including NeoPets, BarbieGirls, Lego Universe alongside the likes of Second Life and Habbo Hotel and including the games like Runescape and World of Warcraft, then that that might not be too far off.

Posted in Play, Second Life, Virtual Worlds. No Comments »
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