Serious Games Summit thoughts - Day 1

Following are some thoughts on the first day of the Serious Games Summit, Washington D.C. I've tried to organize thoughts based on the order of sessions I attended. Sorry if I get some names or organizations incorrect...lots to digest in panel sessions and I didn't keep up real well with my notes.

Jim Dunnigan - Keynote
Jim pointed out the changes within the gamer generation, where gamers 10 years ago seemed to be into strategy games and now gamers are primarily into reflex, twitch games (90% of all game projects in the present are some breed of FPS). Serious games should build off people's addictions. Most people are addicted to their jobs in some form or another, and games need to reflect this. Jim also pointed out something I think is very important...Serious games need to have little to no learning curve. People should play these games based on their curiosity, which we should then be able to gently lead them into the educational aspects of the game initiated by their curiosity at the beginning. Most games we see in this field are often military, combat related. Jim pointed out that 90% of the military are non-combatants, and this market needs to be addressed. Jim spoke a lot about operations research, which I'm not familiar with but plan to look into.
Final thoughts: Jim's presentation was good (he's a great speaker), but really not a lot of new information presented.

Ben Sawyer and Ian Bogost - Project Connect: from A to Z
I actually went to an education roundtable on funding for games during this slot, but no facilitator showed up and the group somewhat self-organized and began discussions...which seemed a bit irrelevant from what I expected so I bumped over to Ben and Ian's presentation. This was one of the better sessions I attended, as it has a lot of practical nuggets of information and good 'lessons learned' type material. Some highlights:
- When developing games in flash, you NEED game developers who know flash, NOT flash developers who (think they) know games
- Buy-in from clients is fairly easy at first, but sometimes becomes much more difficult as the project moves forward (this is new for them, and they began to get nervous in fear of failure)
- Games need to be accurate, but also fun. There is sometimes a gray area where you can present some non-accurate/relevant information in order to add to the fun factor, and sometimes you can't (yet another type of balance for us to consider)
- Learning attachments - small items that are somewhat on the periphery of the actual game, but add an element of complimentary learning (try and find areas to include tidbits of information like this within the game)
Final Thoughts: Good presentation. I would have liked to get into the support for these games (they are not stand-alone, they need to be facilitated by instructors) and how they handle teacher adoption, as well as teacher and student support and community building.

Jim Gee, Debra Lieberman, Elaine Rayborn, David Rejeski - How can games shape future behaviors
Some points from each panelist:
Gee:
- Transference of learning is not quick, easy or cheap!
- People like games b/c they are pro-social...they can make you feel socially good by actions within the game, and they can lead to social interactions (both online and away from the game)
- Games are best for teaching systems, not facts
Lieberman:
- Interaction through media can effect and impact behavior. Those people who interact virtually get better and better at communicating in the medium (but might lose some communication skills in face-to-face)
- Playing games FORCE the player to pay very close attention to succeed (very good for teaching/learning through games)
Rayborn:
- Games are addictive b/c they create thinking and feeling during gameplay.
- Games foster problem solving and critical thinking skills
Rejeski:
- Why use games to try and mimic emergent, unplanned behavior when you can put 1000's of people in an online environment and let things play out?
- Online games will be the 'big bang' for government gaming
- Games bring a top-sight perspective where the player must see how a system works from the top, then try and manipulate/manage the system
- This top-sight perspective breeds leaders! Funny example cited: did we witness any top-sight characteristics in the presidential debates? Nah...
- Games provide a 'soft death' environment (can fail softly, then try again)
- Modding = free research
Final thoughts: this presentation had some good nuggets of information, but seemed very academic in nature. A lot of what was covered almost seemed like common sense for those of us who have been playing games for years.

Matt Costello, Jeff Hall, Edmond A. Heinbockel, Ariella Lehrer, and Bill Slease: Game based approaches to story based training
I didn't decipher who said what in this presentation, but here are the main points I cam away with:
- In adventure games, the story is the game, and the game is the story (both dependent on one another)
- If you don't know the difference between emergent story vs. embedded story, you should
- Stories create dramatic tension and force people to make decisions
- Story and gameplay should evolve together (not one before the other)
- When putting together teams to work on projects, CREATIVITY is *the* core competency. You hire, fire, reward, etc. based on creativity and ideas
- Programmers should *not* drive the project.
- Video storytelling fails b/c gamers are now twitch oriented. Watching a video for 60 seconds then making a decision is not enough freedom.
- Video vs. 3D environments. In video environments, you know you are not interacting, but in 3D environments, you mentally choose whether you are interacting or not
- Instructional designers are very important in these projects, but some can't seem to make the 'jump to lightspeed' in transferring ID skills to these projects, while others can.
Final thoughts: I particularly liked the comment about instructional designers. This is part of my background and my job, and I can see how important IDs are to the projects, but some IDs are so rigid and can't seem to bend their ID thinking to environments like this. Such a shame.

Michael Cleveland, Joseph Henderson, Walt Scacchi, Jesse Schell - Is open source the silver bullet for costs, time, and process?
Again, I didn't separate comments by name, but here's what I cam away with.
- Open source folks represent a huge community of like-minded people, which is extremely helpful
- Users can become developers and contributors = invaluable
- Absolutely MUST have a bug report system when several people are contributing source code
- Open source is a SOCIAL movement, NOT a technology movement (sharing = good, community = good, helping each other = good)

That was my experience of Day 1 in a nutshell. Working on Day 2 thoughts, as well as overall thoughts, to post later.