Game Developers Conference 2008 - (Page 50) Serious Games Summit MonDAY, FebruArY 18 chris swain (university of southern california) 10:30-11am Make this game better: thE rEDistrictinG GamE (part i) chance to respond. Chris will then offer some rebuttal and comments to the efforts allowing insight into why certain ideas may or may not work from his standpoint as the team lead. systems more conducive to purposes beyond commercial entertainment. Lunch coffee break 11-11:10am 12:10-1:40pm In 2007 Chris Swain lead a USC Annenberg School team to design a serious game with the purpose of helping the public understand the process of legislative redistricting and reforms related to redistricting. Redistricting is the process of producing defined geographic boundaries of population which are represented in Congress or the state legislature. As more and more powerful demographic systems and mapping software have become available, redistricting has grown into a very elite game of optimization also known as gerrymandering. Each side in the process (essentially the two major political parties) attempts to push a slate of designed districts it feels are advantageous to their party’s candidates through the legislative and negotiation process. The results can sometimes be astoundingly bizarre shaped districts and ultimately result in voter confusion and disenfranchisement from the entire process. thE rEDistricting gamE tries to capture the core yearning for optimization process that exists in redistricting but then attempts to show users various proposed reforms in the process as new constraints on the rules of the game. Users are then given links to various reform sites as well. The game is now out and fully playable. Like all games there are many ideas that never made it through the final cut. In this session, Chris will present the full version of thE rEDistricting gamE. Two leads from the audience will be announced and then each lead will have over 24 hours to compile ideas into a quick presentation for the following day detailing an imagined 2.0 version of the game and associated project. The goal of this session is not to just make the game itself better but to figure out new ideas the potentially improve the impact of the project’s mission. After the presentations the audience will be given a Serious Games Summit game engines for serious games Amulya K. garga (Lockheed Martin), tim Holt (oregon state university), perry McDowell (Delta3D), ben sawyer (Digitalmill), roger smith (u.s. Army simulation, training, and instrumentation) 11:10am-12:10pm A major element of the serious games field is the appropriation of game engines of all shapes and sizes to power an application whose core purpose is something other then entertainment. Many of these engines power straight-up simulations, while others power data visualization applications, and of course, games with specific content orientated toward the developer’s outcome goals. Given that serious game projects often have special needs and constraints projects often find that the engines they choose come up short in various ways big and small. At the same time companies like Breakaway and Microsoft are bring out engines and platforms that are meant to specifically address aspects of serious games in ways other engines haven’t. During this session a spectrum of serious game developers will discuss from experience the various deltas between what game engines offer today and what they need them to offer in the future. While it is clear that many game engines offer a number of advantages in the general application space, there is a need to communicate more effectively lists of features—big and small—to engine developers that could be of specific help to the serious games market. The goal of this panel is to define not only some of these needs for the most common form of first/third person 3D game engines, but to look even more broadly at other game-engine frameworks such as RPGs, RTS’s, wargame engines, interactive fiction, and hypothesize features and approaches that would make these serious game World reports: part i (uK & France) stephane de buttet (Agence rhône-Alpes numérique - Lyon game), robert J. stone (Human Factors integration Defence technology center) 1:40-2:50pm Around the world more and more regions are developing their own unique serious game projects, research, culture, and industry. In an effort to keep up on the world of serious games we’ve invited prominent serious game community leaders from their respective regions to provide some critical updates on what is taking place in key regions such as the U.K., France, Japan, Korea, and Canada. Many of these regions have recently held major meetings that included presentations on serious games. A special goal of these reports will be to highlight how people inside and outside of each region can better network to resources located there helping to expand the connections between various geographic centers of serious games activity. Come increase your worldwide prospective on serious games and learn how to plug into the growing community. Videogames to build & retain tV Audience Dante Anderson (Kuma reality games), randy brown (Virtual Heroes, inc.), noah Falstein, Frank Lantz (area/code), swen Vincke (Larian studios) 3-4pm As more and more audiences on TV fracture television, producers are looking for new ways to find and retain loyal audiences around their shows and the resulting brands. While the world of videogames is awash in titles adapted from TV brand licenses, for commercial entertainment there is a new wave of activity that involves utilizing games to specifically support the core broadcast product. 50 Visit www.gdconf.com for daily coverage of GDC 2008 http://www.gdconf.com/?cid=GDC08_showguide http://www.gdconf.com/?cid=GDC08_showguide
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