What will great serious games look like?

Keynote: Ben Sawyer

Over saw the creation of Virtual U, president of Digitalmill, Inc.

Afterthought: I had a really hard time following this talk. I get the gist, but the details were very quick and very "inside". I didn't get many of the references.


All Games are Serious

When I want to be entertained it's a good use of time. The only time a game is a waste of time is if the game sucks.

Sawyer did two talks in the Spring:

Recap:

The return of Drill and Skill (GDC): There is an opportunity to develop games that can change practice behaviors...Drill and Skill Games.

Games Everywhere: browser and HTML based is going to be the platform for Serious games in the future. Mix in mobile, and other devices.

Integration with other apps will create an ever deepening platform to provide experience.

Mentioned Minecraft

Google Web Toolkit

For 99% of serious gamers, latency is not an issue, so move on.

Four thoughts:

• What we build & how we build it is changing (especially serious games)
• What do we have with the body of work we have done?
• Scalability at implementation
• infrastructure vs. game - re balancing investment

Serious games is an established concept:

You can do behavior change based on a videogame, Sawyer doesn't say it is better, just that you CAN do it.

Most serious games are disconnected from the players and the community. We're on the outside looking in. We're just not making an impact.

Sawyer finds it repulsive that one aspect of the current implementation of serious games is removing the human interaction from the environment. When you add a human, things seem to work better, the game needs to help create connection.

Guerilla Gardening video.

Speaker was alerted about the game, and wonderd if this game could change the world for the better. Sawyer (and Bogost) agree that the game is not a persuasive game.

There are 4 ways that a game can affect change

1. The game exists and inspires action; activating support
2. Produces sills & aptitudes
3. Playing equals instantiated change (can it be sustained?)
4. Motivation through messaging.

Sometimes if you insert a game in to an environment, the fact that ANYTHING was injected could create the change. It's very existence in the environment initiates the change.

When talking about Guerilla Gardening, Sawyer believes that the 1st and 4th point have merit, but he is skeptical. Unless a game can embed all the community interactions from a webiste (like Guerilla Gardening . org) then it is not got be affective.

Sawyer got lots of requests to incorporate real data into Virtual U, but real world data does not necessarily make a good game (Grand Theft Auto doesn't use a real map, it uses a map optimized for game play.)

A large part of the serious games clients, want their data in the game.

Connectedness

• human connectedness
• action connectedness
• systems connectedness

We are not fighting the right battle anymore. The battle has changed. People are not asking "is this game thing good?" they're asking "can we do THIS?"

We need a way to connect our games back to real world infrastructures and make this stick.

Infrastructure that needs to surround serious games

accessibility --> Where is the toolkit?
Metrics-->Where's the toolkit?
Deployment tools-->Network Management tools
Mentor Tools & Networks (Community)-->Tool set? Web System?
High Score & Achievements-->Where is this?
Adaptive Systems-->Tools? Services?
SCORM/LMS?-->???????
Behavior/Sustained Play Support Systems-->Tools?

What other traits are there?

• Pervasive & Platform Agnostics
• World Class Security
• Connected to our Data
• Real Curriculum Materials & Support
• Modifiable & Malleable

What will great serious games look like? Sawyer doesn't care anymore. If the infrastructure is not in place to create connection, it won't be worthwhile.