A 'Serious' Growth Area For Game Developers? 56
simoniker writes "The recently launched Serious Games Source website, which deals with games created for training, health, government, military, and educational uses, has an interview with the Serious Game Initiative's Ben Sawyer, in which the non-profit director, looking back at E3, comments controversially: 'I believe that every company in the games space will have a serious games related business position in the next ten years.' Sawyer especially referenced Square Enix's recent announcement that it has created a subsidiary to 'develop and distribute edutainment style software'. How many of our traditional education and training courses will be taken over by games over the next few years?"
Not new, 8 bit computer had great educational (Score:5, Insightful)
Selling those 8 bit Commodores, "back in the day", the educational software market was huge...MAvis Beacon, Carmen Sandiego. Most adults bought the machine for their kids and the first software purchase was for education...then games. It wasn't until the later 8 bit years nearing the 16 bit years that games took off bigger than educational software.
Gregor
Re:Not new, 8 bit computer had great educational (Score:2)
Yeah, I learned to do surgery from the M*A*S*H video game.
Re:Not new, 8 bit computer had great educational (Score:1)
A Serious Growth Area... (Score:2, Funny)
Re: A Serious Growth Area... (Score:1)
Maybe someday... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Maybe someday... (Score:2, Funny)
Imaginary Numbers = Good.
Imaginary Words = Bad.
You may be good at math, but I think you need more time with those language edutainment games.
Re:Maybe someday... (Score:3)
Remember when Trip Hawkins at 3DO was pushing "Edutainment" as the "wave of the future!" I think that system was mainly used for playing Japanese "H" Games at the end of its lifespan....
So, I guess if I really want to get the jump on this new "edutainment" trend, I should start investing in companies that produce H
A Far Cry. (Score:4, Interesting)
*I have plenty more were that came from for anyone interested.
Re:A Far Cry. (Score:1)
Time to dig up the game CD...
Re:A Far Cry. (Score:1)
Re:A Far Cry. (Score:2)
how many? (Score:5, Funny)
All of them. I'm particularly looking forward to playing Super Quantum Chromodynamics Brothers II, Welfare Fraud Investigator Deluxe, and Tom Clancy's: State Farm Policy Insurance Ghost Writer.
Re:how many? (Score:1)
Re:how many? (Score:1)
Nice MMORPG... Massively Multiplayer Offline Ripoff Protection Game?
Re:how many? (Score:1)
Re:how many? (Score:2)
You know that Tom Clancy used to be in the insurance business, right? Yeah. He's not from the military or the intelligence community.
Re:Edutainment? *sighs* (Score:1)
All shooters are games, however not all games are shooters.
Therefore, shooter games are a subset of games. You can have many different types of games that are educational that do not have violence in them at all. Look at Brain Age for the Nintendo DS for a perfect example of how you can make an educational game without violence.
Re:Edutainment? *sighs* (Score:2, Insightful)
No, you really don't want to validate their existance by responding to them.
(Yes, this message is self defeating.)
Re:Edutainment? *sighs* (Score:1)
So, I guess some of the tests for divergence will have to be nerfed. And numerical integration is too unbalanced, I have always said. Still
Re:Edutainment? *sighs* (Score:2)
Learning is only entertaining if you make it entertaining. Most people have no fucking idea whatsoever how to do this. In addition if you give a kid the option of doing a math test or going out to play, unless they're a quadriplegic they're probably going to be out the door so fast they'll be represented only by a sonic boom and a vaguely child-shaped blur.
They tried to tell us something about the oregon trail in class when I was a kid, but it was boring so I didn't pay attention. The only reason I have
Government/ Military (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Government/ Military (Score:1)
Virtual Heroes (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Virtual Heroes (Score:2)
What about the classic (Score:3, Insightful)
I would like to see more open ended games that didn't involve killing people or being a criminal.
Re:What about the classic (Score:1)
Worlds number 1 game is a virtual dolls house.
go figure.
Myself, I prefer shoot em ups, currently I'm waging war in Call of Duty
Re:What about the classic (Score:2)
Maybe a game where I could drive across country?
Or maybe one where I am pilot a research sub?
Or drive an ATV to place research instruments in a national forest?
Or get to be smoke jumper?
All with really good graphics?
How about all of the above as missions in a game?
Seems like you could have a game with the depth of some of the GTA games but with more positive missions.
Re:What about the classic (Score:1)
Re:What about the classic (Score:2)
This is great news! (Score:2, Funny)
The Matrix: Excess XSS
and
The Matrix SQL: Injected
...pending franchise approval, of course.
(The Brothers Wack' have already covered buffer overruns.)
Re:This is great news! (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure a Matrix hacking game would concentrate on buffer overflows [securityfocus.com].
Re:This is great news! (Score:1)
Secondly, I covered the buffer overflow issue in the last line of my original post.
New franchise! Sp
That would be hilarious: (Score:2)
Neo: "No, Morpheus."
Morpheus: "It means everyone who does business with the Bank of Zion is about to get their identity hijacked and the next time you get together with Trinity she will actually be a 40 year old Russian Man."
Neo: "Whoa."
Here's more information.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Oooh, it has "interactive movies" too... I'm actually salivating, "play an interactive movie: help create characters, shift the story line, change the situation, watch something different happen each time - cable in the VCR and edit your home videos." I'm sure that's going to beat the heck out of playing games! (Note, article is from May/Jun 1993 and titled "
This just in... (Score:2)
The relaunched site, Yahoo Serious Games Source, is now in beta testing in Australia.
I want to play... (Score:1)
Social Skills Building Games (Score:5, Informative)
I think dating sims are a great start to this, but they are all fantasy based, very unrealistic etc. I'd love to see a video game that uses real life video of people to train you to better read facial expressions and body language as well as to learn good responses to situations that may cause social anxiety.
If anybody can think of any currently existing titles that are good for this, by all means please post them.
And for you smartasses who are going to answer "I got a game for you, its called Real Life"....my response to you is that as someone with Social Anxiety Disorder, it isn't always as simple as "oh, I'm nervous around people so I'll go talk to as many as I can to try to get over this". Often times there is a specific underlying fear of the social interaction itself (or many fears) that need to be worked on before someone is able to test their skills out on a real person. I honestly think that the one person qualified to make such a game would be David DeAngelo. Some of his stuff may be fluff and an attempt at pushing more product, but at his core, he knows his shit and he speaks the brutal truth about interaction with the opposite sex.
Re:Social Skills Building Games (Score:2)
I think this is quite frankly impossible. Humans do not behave in the way they are supposed to. Learning how to relate to people is not about learning how to behave, or how to respond, to a fixed set of stimuli. Everyone is different and many (most!) people cross-signal constantly. There is no way to learn to interact other than interacting.
I think a computer program would do more harm than good by giving you a false sense of proficiency.
Re:Social Skills Building Games (Score:2)
Even with a false sense of proficiency, you would at least have confidence. I've studied improvisational acting quite a bit, so if I press myself, I can usually fake confidence. When you seem confident, even with no real social skill, things do tend to go more smoothly. I still hate most social settings, especially if there are lots of people around, but a tool to help build up confidence at basic social in
Re:Social Skills Building Games (Score:2)
I hate to break this to you but outside of finishing school, none of it is ever taught. And, although I don't (to my knowledge) have any related disorders, when I'm in awkward so
Re:Social Skills Building Games (Score:2)
Social Skills Building Games - the Sims? (Score:2, Interesting)
If anybody can think of any currently existing titles that are good for this, by all means please post them.
Hmmm. How about the Sims 2? Specifically, the Hot Date, University, and Nightlife expansions
Re:Social Skills Building Games (Score:2)
90% of learning skills is dealing with the stress of the real world environment.
Warning: "serious" is overloaded in this context.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Warning: "serious" is overloaded in this context:
"serious games"
Found 2 possible classes:
"Serious::Game" in namespace "Croteam"
"Serious::Game" in namespace "adjective"
Didn't anybody else think <voice="Serious Sam">"Cool - Croateam are doing more Serious games - let's get our Serious Bombs and go kick some serious ass!"</voice>
'Serious' Games Source, huh? (Score:2)
*hesitates to click the Post Anonymously button*
Serious games I'd like to play (Score:2)
Also add something like a virtual solar furnace/big bang that would allow you to start out with hydrogen and try to build increasingly heavier elements.
Chemical construction kit-
UNC's edutainment for credit (Score:1)
If Civ counted for History credit, I'd probably have a PhD in it by now.
Not a good start (Score:1)