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Serious Games Summit: The cheat's the thing
Cheating in games is a bad thing, right? Not necessarily says Mia Consalvo, a University of Ohio professor who has spent the past five years studying cheating and cheaters in video games.Where cheating in an academic or professional setting is severely frowned upon, Consalvo found through her research that almost all gamers consider cheating a natural part of video games. By conducting interviews with gamers and game-makers, wide surveys of players and direct experience with cheating in Final Fantasy XI, Consalvo has broken down the spectrum of video game cheaters into three general groups: Purists, who consider it unethical to complete a game using any outside help from codes, strategy guides or even advice from friends. Purists tend to think of these things as cheating themselves out of the full experience of the game, like peeking at a gift before Christmas morning "Code is law" followers, who believe cheating is all right as long as it is integrated into the game code by the developers. God mode in Doom is all right, hacking into Counter-Strike to create a god mode is not. "Cheaters," who will take any possible advantage against other players, who they often assume are cheating as well. This group will use hacks and outside programs to affect the game, and believe cheating doesn't hurt the cheater's enjoyment of the game experience. Consalvo also discussed the various motivations players had for cheating: Many players use cheats and guides to get unstuck or to add value to a game, but some use hints and codes as a way of fast forwarding through tedious sections or just to "be an ass" as Consalvo put it.Given the insatiable desire for players to cheat at games, Consalvo suggested that designers focus on making hints and exploits a natural part of single-player games rather than trying to force complete order. In multi-player games, she said that systems where players police themselves and punishments that take away prestige work better than technological solutions.
Serious Games Summit: A military takeover of serious games
Things have come a long way since the U.S. Armed Forces got into the video game business with Marine Doom in the early '90s. Just ask Roger Smith, an analyst who presented on the past, present and future of military involvement in games at the Serious Games Summit. In the dozen or so years since their shallow, graphical Doom II mod, Smith said the military has integrated full-fledged training simulations for all sorts of different positions and situations. Right now most of that training goes to the "trigger pullers" -- the people risking their lives on the front lines -- but Smith said lower-cost technology solutions would allow for simulations geared towards medical, logistical, maintenance, and other troops who currently don't have many other training options.While recent military sims like America's Army and Full Spectrum Warrior have crossed over into the commercial market, Smith said he sees this trend slowing in the future, with the military developing narrowly targeted simulations suited specifically for military use, not living room use. As this trend continues, Smith sees the military developing internal game development resources to create its games, rather than buying off-the-shelf parts and talent from outside game companies.Smith also talked excitedly about the military's interest in developing for the Xbox 360 through the XNA program. While there were too many roadblocks to developing military trainers for the original Xbox, Smith said a simulation designed for powerful, affordable hardware like the 360 had the potential to open up training to every soldier, rather than just those in units with access to expensive, high-end PCs.Also see: Serious Games Summit: Defense dept. games
Serious Games Summit: ExerGaming + EduGaming = ExerLearning
It's a no-brainer that games like Dance Dance Revolution can do wonders in combating our country's growing youth obesity epidemic. But can rhythm-action games also help children improve cognitive skills like reading comprehension and concentration?Former Florida teacher Judy Shasek would likely answer that question with an emphatic yes. With the help of a $125,000 sponsorship from RedOctane, Shasek has integrated games like Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero and accessories like the X-Board into the curricula at three test schools around the country for the past three years. The results, Shasek said in a presentation at the Serious Games Summit, mirror the results of numerous academic studies that show 10 minutes of aerobic activity before a test can be more helpful than 20 minutes of tutoring, and that replacing four hours per week of class time with physical education helps standardized test scores go up.What's more, playing rhythm games leads to improved algebra skills, Shasek says, and reading fast-moving notes in games like DDR helps train children's eyes for reading text. No ones really sure why these games have the cognitive effects that they do, but the working theories involve increased oxygenation to the brain and hidden, unlocked power in the cerebellum, the brain's motion and balance center. Whatever the science, Shasek says introducing the games also has fringe benefits like decreased absenteeism and improved attentiveness among students.Shasek is hoping to expand her program to teachers and schools across the country through her web site, Generation Fit, which includes some great videos of students getting their dance on. She's also trying to expand the benefits to the adult workplace with Revive! Nation, a program focused on adding rhythm games to break/lunch rooms. With physical activity on the decline among kids and adults, we can only say more power to her.
Serious Games Summit: Epic Games' Mark Rein
In advance of the upcoming release of Gears of War, Epic Games' Mark Rein appeared at the Serious Games Summit to promote the Unreal Engine 3 for serious game development. Amid a video demo of the game and the usual PR-speak about how, with the Xbox 360, "the next gen is here now," Rein talked about how Unreal Engine 3 allowed the game to be developed at a fraction of the cost (GOW cost $10 million), time (two years to develop), and manpower (average 30 person team size) of other similar games. To accentuate this point to the crowd, Rein brought out a developer from Virtual Heroes, a developer of "advanced learning technologies" that's using the engine in their games. He showed off an impressive demo of a full navigable Martian surface, featuring amazing ridges and vistas that were streamed from the hard drive dynamically and constructed using real Martian elevation data from NASA. The demo was thrown together in only four days, according to the developers.Despite the advantages of the latest Unreal Engine, Rein admitted his team outsourced some art and programming help for Gears of War. Rein noted that with today's games this was practically a necessity: character models that were 3,000 polygons in 2004 have ballooned to nearly 4 million polygons for Unreal Tournament 2007. As Rein himself wryly put it, "Now that's a serious game."
Serious Games Summit: Defense dept. games
While high-profile games like America's Army and Full Spectrum Warrior show the potential of collaboration between the game industry and the defense industry, there can be some friction when these two very different worlds collide. Department of Defense (DoD) analyst Brian Williams and game designer Bob Bates have been researching this very issue, and discussed some of the their findings during a session at today's Serious Games Summit.Among the problems they discussed: While there are hundreds of games being developed by various parts of the DoD, there is no centralized area of the department governing all these projects. Despite hundreds of studies that prove the efficacy of games for education and training, the defense department is still wary to put them forth as a solution to a problem. When they do use games, they are often portrayed as a panacea solution to every problem. There is no organized repository where buyers in defense and sellers in game development can connect easily. The DoD has no rigorous evaluation process to determine whether a game actually succeeds at its goals. Many game projects go forward based on how cool they look rather than how good they are. The game industry has problem working through the mess of contracting regulations and acronyms DoD requires. Small companies don't have the resources to handle the accountability load the military places on them. While military officers are used to having their orders followed to the letter, game developers are used to questioning directions and looking for different ways to do things. Despite all these problems, Williams and Bates agreed that games would be an increasingly important part of the way the defense department does training in the future. "Games are a part of the common language these soldiers speak, and that language can be used to teach," Bates said.
Serious Games Summit: Henry Jenkins keynote
I'm here at the Serious Games Summit in Arlington, VA where the keyword of the keynote speech by MIT's Henry Jenkins was convergence. Not necessarily technological convergence -- that mythical, magical black box that will control your media and your life -- but a cultural convergence that allows a community to form a collective intelligence around a game, movie or TV show. The real appeal of media experiences today, Jenkins argued, is not necessarily the product itself, but the community that grows around it, the participatory culture that doesn't come in the box.Jenkins urged the serious games movement to keep this in mind when designing the educational and socially relevant games the conference is focused on. He challenged the diverse crowd of experts from the government, education, military, health and social change fields to create educational games that were less like a spelling bee (high on memorization, low on discussion and engagement) and more like Scrabble (high on experimentation, low on penalties for risk). Jenkins also echoed Will Wright's call for games that are interdisciplinary, that take on multiple agendas instead of just narrowly focusing on one subject.With the final part of his speech, Jenkins focused on specific projects trying to achieve these goals -- games like Revolution, a Neverwinter Nights mod that encourages students to role-play as a colonial patriot, and Labyrinth, an upcoming game that teaches math and logic skills on top of a search for a lost pet. Jenkins also acknowledged the challenges of getting these products out to market (some teachers refused to buy Revolution because of occult symbols in Neverwinter Nights, for instance), but seemed hopeful that companies could break through these barriers by joining together.
