serious
Latest
South Korea serious about serious games, invests $64 million
The South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, Tourism and Starcraft (okay, we made that last one up) plans to invest ₩80 billion ($64 million) in serious games. The Korea IT Times reports that the ministry is trying to grow the market to ₩500 billion ($400 million) by 2012. Minister Yu In-chon notes that the serious games market is at an early stage and is an "emerging blue ocean." Oh, look who's jumping on the hot topic business bandwagon.The "Blue Ocean Strategy" is a concept where a company sets up shop in an unknown space, rather than compete in a cluttered market. For gamers, obvious examples of applied Blue Ocean Strategy would be Nintendo's entire marketing of the Wii, and developers who jumped on the iPhone app store. Currently, Korea has no specific serious games projects announced, but likely applications are based in the medical, educational and military fields. [Via GI.biz]
The WoW Headhunter helps with guild recruiting
Last week we were kindly invited on the PixelatedGeek podcast (thanks, Erin and Nelson, for having me!) and while there, we heard from Darren of WoW Headhunter, a brand new site that wants to get you or your guild hooked up with some new guildies. The site is pretty barebones: you can look through available guilds or enter your own. But they do add a little something new: whenever you enter a guild into the site, you can create application questions and even run through a survey that charts your guild along four lines: between Reckless and Deliberate, Social and Competitive, Fun and Serious, and Learner and Veteran. So you can choose between the Reckless Competitive Veterans and the Deliberate Social Learners.Kind of a fun idea. Unfortunately, the site isn't too populated yet (I couldn't find recruiting guilds on either of the servers I frequent), but it did just go live today, so it may take some time for recruiting guilds to find their way over there. And unfortunately, while there is an option to put an Armory link in your profile, the site itself doesn't tie in to the Armory directly, so you still have to go searching for metrics when players apply (would be nice to see a list of what achievements have been done by the player, as well as some common stats to compare).But it will be nice to have a list of guilds to browse, along with a little more info about them, all in one place. If you've been looking for a guild for a while with no luck, there's one more option.
Weekly Webcomic Wrapup: It's a Gamer's Life
We wanted to take this space to highlight Tim Buckley's seven-part It's a Gamer's Life comic. We were genuinely surprised by how touched we were, even if the text stuck to a very cliché A-B-C-B poetic format. It's a serious webcomic, but it's game-related. We wish more people out there would enjoy gaming comics that took a more serious tone, but they are few and far between and the few times we've thrown them into the wrapup polls, we've seen more than a few complaints about the lack of humor. Webcomics don't have to be funny to be poignant, but we digress. Start at the beginning and read through the seven-part strip. Here are our picks for the week's best game-related webcomics, be sure to vote for your favorite! (Polling after the break.) Solid Smash Bros. Fun with Forge Left behind (pre-spoiler) Blast from the past "Falcon ..." Call a timeout Red ring of death A narrative in Crisis Pigs in Space
On CMs and their thread choices
Unholycow on Thrall finally calls out the CMs (in a more literate-than-usual way, I mean) for something they've been doing a long time on the forums-- posting in inconsequential threads, while big player questions remain unanswered. As he says, "what's going on?"Neth answers pretty quickly, and this issue goes almost directly back to the issue of communication between players and CMs. The CMs feel they have a lot more freedom to post on silly threads, obviously, and so they do it more. But when talking about "serious" issues (or maybe just more touchy subjects), their words carry more weight, and so they have to pick and choose what they say.And to that, I have to agree with Tolki, who posts in the thread that we'd rather have an Oprah than a Tony Snow. Sure, things didn't work out so well the last time a CM was completely honest with us, but surely there's a middle ground. BlizzCast is a start-- maybe the devs and CMs should work together to make sure that fairly often (once a week or even once a day), they can speak out on a "serious" issue, and give the player base something to chew on. It could be argued that the CMs' words carry so much weight on serious issues because we almost never hear from them, and if that's true, a regular schedule of discussions with either CMs or devs would help give the CMs more freedom to be more honest with us about what they think about (hey heeeeyy) what's really going on in game.
Re-Mission devs HopeLab cause serious Ruckus
DDR and the Wii have done a good job getting kids (and adults) off the couch and moving. Now HopeLab, a prominent contributer to the growing 'serious games' movement and developer of the surprisingly fun third-person cancer awareness shooter Re-Mission, has announced Ruckus Nation, a new online competition looking to award more than $300,000 for game-related product ideas designed to increase physical activity in children and young adults, with one one grand prize brainstorm netting the submitter a cool $75,000. HopeLab will develop and test one or more of these ideas, turning successful prototypes into broadly distributed serious gaming products. Individuals and teams of up to six people can register at the Ruckus Nation website until October 15, with registration limited to 1,000 teams who then have until November 20 to submit their ideas online. Semifinalists will be announced in February, with winners being called out the following month in March. Maybe we've finally found an outlet to pitch our idea for a For Your Eyes Only cross country ski trainer/FPS using the Wii Zapper and balance board.
Companies looking to make work more like games
Wish you could play games at work? You know, without having to sneak around? Soon you might be able to. Entrepreneur.com has a short report on the growing number of companies and government agencies that are making their work interfaces more like games.The article doesn't go into much detail, but organizations from IBM to Microsoft and even the military are looking to integrating games into their work processes. The move comes partly because an increasing part of the workforce are growing up with "neuropathways ... being formed around game logic," according to John Beck, co-author of The Kids Are Alright.It's fine in concept, but we're skeptical that any game can make the drudgery of cubicle life more enjoyable. Regardless, playing games at work will bring a new meaning to the term daily grind. *rim shot*
Slate: Serious games are seriously boring
For all the bluster about serious games being the wave of the future, most examples of the form thus far are missing that key element of ... what's the word ... oh yeah, fun! Slate takes a withering look at the state of the serious games industry by asking the simple question: "Can a game still be called a game if it isn't any fun?"It's a good question, and one that doesn't reflect kindly on many of the serious games out there. The author is especially derisive of training games that mirror the repetitive, mindless nature of the workplace -- games that are "less alluring to people who love games and more alluring to people who don't. Your boss, for example."The author suggests that developers who want to make learning fun should focus on the fun first and the learning second. We couldn't agree more. We learned more about urban planning from SimCity than we ever learned about arithmetic from Math Blaster -- mainly because we kept playing SimCity long after Math Blaster got donated to the secondhand store. In other words: you can lead a player to an educational game, but you can't make them play. They have to want to do that.
Game aims to help kids cope with divorce
When parents are going through a divorce, children usually want to focus on something else -- anything else -- rather than watching the painful process of a marriage breaking apart. They might even want to focus on Earthquake in Zipland, a simple adventure game designed by a team of psychologists to help nine to 12 year olds deal with the complex emotions surrounding a crumbling marriage.We can appreciate the desire to help children through interactive entertainment, but the ham-handed allegory the game presents sounds like it could use some work. As the game's web site puts it, Zipland is "a small paradise island comprised of two parts held together by a zipper, which represents the marriage of the parents (the King and Queen). Suddenly an earthquake rips the island into two, leaving the king and the queen on separate islands. Moose, the hero, sets out on a quest to build a new zipper and try to re-combine the two islands so that life can go on as before (which of course he can't)." Talk about depressing.We doubt that most children want or need to be reminded of the harsh reality of divorce through a game. These children would probably be served just as well by any engaging game that provides a distracting escape from the real world. It takes time to come to terms with the painful circumstances surrounding a parental divorce, and forcing them to confront these circumstances through a game might do as much harm as good.
NPR talks "Games for Change" conference
NPR's Marketplace introduced the segment saying, "They're often accused of wasting your time or promoting violence but a conference in New York City this week wants games to be known for something more." The ongoing Games For Change conference is part of the larger Serious Games initiative, but is focused specifically on using games to encourage social change. NPR profiled three of the games on display at the conference, including: Peace Maker - "a one-player game in which the player can choose to take the role of either the Israeli Prime Minister or the Palestinian President. The player must react to in-game events, from diplomatic negotiations to military attacks, and interact with eight other political leaders and social groups in order to establish a stable resolution to the conflict before his or her term in office ends." A Force More Powerful - "simulates nonviolent struggles to win freedom and secure human rights against dictators, occupiers, colonizers, and corrupt regimes, as well as campaigns for political and human rights for minorities and women. The game models real-world experience, allowing players to devise strategies, apply tactics and see the results." Darfur is Dying - MTV's "narrative-based simulation where the user, from the perspective of a displaced Darfurian, negotiates forces that threaten the survival of his or her refugee camp. It offers a faint glimpse of what it's like for the more than 2.5 million who have been internally displaced by the crisis in Sudan. A far cry from the hysteria-prone coverage the mainstream media typically adheres to and great exposure for a group of gamers working to not only foster social change, but to evolve the educational potential for video games. Follow coverage of the conference by monitoring the 06-G4C del.icio.us tag.
