Games mix work and play

From The Australian,
http://australianit.news.com.au

Games mix work and play
Barbara Gengler and Roland Tellzen
JUNE 20, 2006

A NEW generation of serious video games is aiming to save the world through peace and democracy.

Serious games are just a tiny niche in the $US25 billion ($33.8 billion) interactive entertainment sector, but they are growing in importance.

Australia, which is strong in the mainstream games design, also features in the serious games arena through companies such as Melbourne's Torus Digital Concepts.
The basic concept of all video games is to allow the player to control the events of a particular character and force him or her to connect and manipulate information to move on to the next level.

Serious games, which merge the video game and educational software, take the concept a step further by allowing players to be problem solvers, political leaders or humanitarian workers while learning information that might otherwise come from a textbook or lecture.
Ben Sawyer, co-director of the Serious Games Initiative and Games for Health, says most games developers will be making serious games within 10 years.

At the recent Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, a Carnegie Mellon University took took first place with its PeaceMaker entry in a Games for Diplomacy contest held by the University of Southern California.

In the game, players assume leadership responsibilities on both sides of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, facing real-life issues, such as military attacks.
The US Army and the University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies are continuing their partnership with another five-year contract.

Since 1999, when the army established the ICT as a university-affiliated research centre, the joint team has been defining a new approach to training.

Part of the mission is to use talent in the commercial games and film sectors to help the Army visualise the needs of its soldiers.

Team executive director Richard Lindheim says the centre is committed in the next five years to advance research in artificial intelligence, computer graphics and immersive audio.
The research will provide realistic and effective interactive learning systems to improve the capabilities of soldiers and offer opportunities for new kinds of learning, he says.
Lindheim says a key priority is to work with the army to ensure that new technologies and research make it from the lab into the hands of soldiers.

Every Soldier a Sensor Simulation is the centre's latest game for military training. With a focus on presence patrols -- missions that provide human intelligence and reinforce US military presence -- ES3 is a web-delivered application that runs on a wide range of PCs.
Some of the most promising developments are in healthcare.

HopeLab, for example, works with young chronically ill patients.
Last month it released a game called Re-Mission, a shooter that allows a player to fight cancer cells, administer chemotherapy and attack infections.

In Australia, companies such as Torus Digital Concepts, which exhibited at this year's CeBIT IT trade fair in Germany, have jumped on the serious games express.

Torus, which also designs mainstream games, has produced game-like training programs for areas such as medicine and policing.

Forexample, the company is building a scenario village for the Victorian Police Department at Glen Waverley. "It's an important facility, a training aid for the police 18-hours-a-day, 365 days a year," Torus' chief executive Bill Macintosh says.

Serious games could eventually overtake the huge general games market, he says. "Serious games are middle ground between simulations and games. They are growing at six times the rate of other games, and the potential market is enormous."