About Serious Games

Serious games (SGs) or persuasive games are computer and video games used as persuasion technology or educational technology. They can be similar to educational games, but are often intended for an audience outside of primary or secondary education. Serious games can be of any genre and many of them can be considered a kind of edutainment.

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Thursday 31 July 2008

Telepresent Robots from Robodynamics



Robodynamics is a company that researches and develops advanced robots designed to automate "life", just as the machines of the industrial revolution automated "work". We went over to their Santa Monica headquarters to check out one of their telepresence robots, with Leah helping host the episode from outside the room, thanks to one of Robodynamic's clever little bots.


http://www.robodynamics.com/




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Changing the Game: How Video Games Are Transforming the Business World



Use Video Games to Drive Innovation, Customer Engagement, Employee Commitment, and Profit!

Changing the Game is fast-paced tour of the many ways in which games, already an influential part of millions of peoples lives, have become a profoundly important part of the business world. From connecting with customers, to attracting and training employees, to developing new products and spurring innovation, games have introduced a new level of fun and engagement to the workplace. Advertising in games, unlike television, is not a burden to be suffered between all-too-brief segments of entertainment. Learning in games, unlike other forms of corporate education, is not a chore--it is puzzle-solving, exploration, and experimentation. And innovation in games, unlike innovation in the lab, is an immediately rewarding experience that brings consumers and businesses together in a revolutionary manner. Changing the Game introduces you to the ways in which games are being used to enhance productivity at Microsoft, increase profits at Burger King, and raise employee loyalty at Sun Microsystems, among other remarkable examples. It is proof that work not only can be fun--it should be.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Changing-Game-Video-Transforming-Business/dp/013235781X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217500803&sr=8-1

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MMO for Future Army Training



"Potentially an MMOG could be created which adheres to the physical and behavioral reality of the world and provides an 'always on' environment in which to execute training, something like World of Warcraft, but focused on the military training customer," says Dr. Roger Smith.


http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/07/mmog.html


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Wednesday 30 July 2008

TED - Kevin Kelly: Predicting the next 5,000 days of the web

http://www.ted.com At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what's coming in the next 5,000 days?



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Tuesday 29 July 2008

US Army using giant videogames as a recruiting tool.







"I like that I got to use a gun!" said 13-year-old Spencer Padgett, after trying the "Virtual Army Experience." His dad, Scott, from Laporte, Ind., said he wanted his son to gain an appreciation of the sacrifices being made by the Army.


http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121721198768289035.html?mod=hpp_us_inside_today

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Monday 28 July 2008

Ian Bogost's Edge Editorial

When we acknowledge videogames as a medium, the notion of a monolithic games industry, which creates a few kinds of games for a few kinds of players, stops making any sense. As does the idea of a demographic category called “gamers” who are the ones who play these games.

http://www.edge-online.com/blogs/the-end-gamers

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Saturday 26 July 2008

io9: The Argument Against ARGs



If you're making a new piece of pop culture and you expect it to reach a mass audience, or even just a subcultural audience, you'd better have an ARG. What's that, you say? ARG stands for “alternate reality game,” and it describes a wide range of interactive puzzles that generally involve getting you to visit various websites, call phone numbers, and go places in major cities in order to get free shit related to a movie, TV show and even occasionally a book. Why are popular titles like Dark Knight and Lost using ARGs? It's more than just advertising: It's a way to build an instant fan base without working at it for years like Star Trek did. But so far, ARGs have few of the benefits of a fandom, such as a friendly community of like-minded people; and they have all of the bad parts of fannish behavior like pointless obsessiveness and fetishization of dumb swag.

more ...

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Guardian - Tech Weekly Podcast: Virtual Worlds Special

This week we explore how virtual worlds can influence the decisions made by politicians and policy makers. We also look at the growing number of children's virtual worlds:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/audio/2008/jul/23/tech.weekly.podcast
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Playcrafter: Social Web Game Platform With Physics



http://www.playcrafter.com/

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FusionFall: New Cartoon Network MMO






http://www.fusionfall.com


http://gigaom.com/2008/07/24/cartoon-network-joins-mmog-via-web-crowd/


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Google Launches Knol: A better Wikipedia ?

The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It's their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good.

With Knol, we are introducing a new method for authors to work together that we call "moderated collaboration." With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public. This allows authors to accept suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of their content. After all, their name is associated with it!


more ...

http://knol.google.com/

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Thursday 17 July 2008

Google's new Digg like search interface



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Wednesday 16 July 2008

The Blue Book: A Consumer Guide to Virtual Worlds Is Now Available Free from the Association of Virtual Worlds

http://associationofvirtualworlds.com/thebluebook/the_blue_book_july_2008_edition.pdf

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Using Games in the Classroom

With the remarkable growth in the gaming industry in recent years, educators have begun looking at games as a way of reaching students in this new digital world. While games have certainly been the target of criticism and even vilification in the popular media, many do possess qualities beneficial to education, such as the presentation of scenarios, problem solving, collaboration, and metrics. Among the early researchers of game pedagogy is James Paul Gee, professor of reading at the University of Wisconsin. Gee sees games as models for sound pedagogical practice. To convince consumers to pay for the privilege of learning the often complex rules, scenarios, and interactions within their games, Gee argues, game manufacturers have had to become expert teachers.

more ...

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Teens herald the death of e-mail ?

A pair of 2007 studies conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project showed that teens are steadily drifting away from the old-fashioned medium.

While 92 percent of surveyed adults said they regularly used e-mail, only 16 percent of teens made it a part of daily life while text messaging (36 percent), instant messaging (29 percent) and social network site messaging (23 percent) gained in popularity.

As teens and 20-somethings and, increasingly, other generations, bypass their in-box in favor of other formats, is e-mail endangered?

"I don't see it as being phased out -- it's still important," Deng says. "(But) texting is simpler, you can just say 'what's up?' An e-mail should be of a more decent length."

Wing also uses LiveJournal to bypass formalities through blog posts and a comments section.

"We used to just yell at each other -- 'Why haven't you returned my call?' -- now my friends have blogs (and) we use them to catch up."

Don't worry, the behavioral shift isn't entirely generational. As e-mail in-boxes overflow with spam, cute-kitten photos, viral video links and all those newsletters you forgot signing up for, we're seeking faster ways to digitally interact.

Take Jim Schraith. The 50-year-old investor still uses e-mail, sure, but regularly augments it with other platforms.

"I use Skype for business communication (because) it's fairly immediate," he says.

more ...

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Moving beyond Second Life marketing, many companies are infiltrating virtual worlds for employee meetings, mixers, and recruiting


It's not always easy to get new employees to mix well with co-workers—especially when they're scattered across the globe or speak different languages. Few companies know this as well as IBM (IBM), the computer services provider that last year alone added 20,000 new staff members, many from Brazil, China, India, and Russia.

But IBM may have found a way to overcome new employees' geographic and cultural barriers. When the Armonk (N.Y.) company can't get recent hires to mingle in person, it has them interact virtually, using the same kind of 3D technology that runs virtual worlds such as Linden Lab's Second Life. "It makes you want to start relationships," says Chuck Hamilton, manager of new media and learning at IBM@Play, a division that uses social media to foster collaboration. "People who are farther away—this is especially true of people who are not American-centric—get the feeling that they're not isolated."

more ...

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Daden Navigator: SL Web Browser



Daden Navigator let's you not only view web pages in Second Life but also follow links from web page to web page. It offers normal browser functions such as Home, Back, History, and Bookmarks. Buy on Daden Prime or at www.slexchange.com.

http://www.daden.co.uk/

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Games Create 'Passion Communities' For Learning


Professor James Gee kicked off the 4th Games, Learning, and Society Conference in Madison, Wisconsin with a talk entitled “Beyond Games & the Future of Learning”, citing titles from Portal to World Of Warcraft to explain why games are uniquely suited to create 'passion communities' where learning can thrive.

Gee is Professor of Literacy at Arizona State University and the author of 'What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy' (2003) and 'Why Video Games Are Good For Your Soul' (2005).

more ...

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Friday 11 July 2008

Businesses are missing out on the huge potential that social networks present

Researchers for Gartner found that huge opportunities for improving the management of large firms exist.

"Businesses which harness how employees use these sites stand to increase savings, productivity and profits," said Gartner researcher Jeffrey Mann.

He told the BBC the challenge was how to apply this to the corporate world.

The Gartner survey discovered that social networking sites, instant messaging email, chat and file sharing are attracting significant levels of interest online.

Their work was undertaken across 18 countries and territories between October and December of last year. It found that 38% of more than 4,000 PC and mobile phone users connect to sites like MySpace and Facebook via PCs.

more ...

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Thursday 3 July 2008

Forget Hybrid Drives, put a HHO in your car for a 40% fuel efficiency boost !



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-fuelled_car


http://www.fuelfromh2o.com/

Hydrogen is the key to burning petrol more quickly and completely (thus the engine can be run with later timing and a leaner mixture with no loss in power):

(part 1)


http://uk.youtube.com/user/srawofni

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Wednesday 2 July 2008

Video games get into shape



It's nearly a decade now, since the first research was started into the idea of using virtual reality games as a form of pain control for burns patients, and in that time a solid body of evidence has built up, with patients reporting a 90% decrease in the pain they experienced when using the system during the game.

Researchers at Manchester are also finding that virtual environments can be very useful for treating patients suffering from "phantom limb" experiences following amputations.

Just as interesting is new work going into examining gaming's potential for treating psychological problems.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7485089.stm

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Tuesday 1 July 2008

Virtual Worlds Help Public Safety Officials Practice for Real-Life Threats


In early 2006, a dozen staff members from the California Department of Health Services received extensive training on how to administer antibiotics from the Strategic National Stockpile in the event of an anthrax attack.

Unlike previous exercises the state had run, however, this simulation didn't involve recruiting mock patients or setting up a staging area. The setting - and patients - were all virtual. Researchers from the University of California-Davis Health System re-created a 3-D model of the California Exposition and State Fair in Second Life, an Internet-based world in which people are represented by virtual body doubles called avatars.

more ...


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Amazon uk