What's New for SGS DC 2006

Many people have been asking me what's new and exciting at the Serious Games Summit D.C. this year.  I usually reply that in such an emerging space, everything is new, but I realize that past attendees to these conferences want to know something more than a general answer.  So here are some of the great things to check out this year:

Customer Panel! The Corporate Game Audit
One of the big requests we've had is more content from customers -- the people who actually want to buy and use serious games.  Well, look no further than one of our major Day Two sessions.  This incredible panel has panelists from Cisco, British Petroleum, Northrop Grumman, and IBM.  All are using or exploring the use of games -- and you'll get an inside look at the mindset and need of the corporate gamer like never before!

Breaking Down Life As A Game
The MacArthur Foundation has provided seven figure support to Jim Gee and GameLab to develop a tool that lets students explore ideas and  define them as games.  If you can design a game about something, chances are you've had to learn a great deal about whatever that topic is.  This project has the potential to take some of Jim's central thesis about games and learning and turn it into a next-generation effort to teach kids about anything they are inclined to find interesting.  The Summit features one of the first extensive talks about this new exciting project with Jim Gee and one of the tools designers, Katie Salen. I'm definitely going to be front and center to hear more.

Fighting the Gerrymander with Games
Chris Swain and Doug Thomas at USC have been developing a game to teach people how the arcane method of re-districting takes place. I've been working a bit on this, and have seen first hand how the team has had to deal with many bread-and-butter serious game project issues.  This talk will certainly reveal more how to edit content to fit a game's needs without ruining the learning opportunities.

Harpoon - An Original Serious Game
Don Gilman and Larry Bond of Harpoon Fame will be providing a case-study of this venerable wargame classic which is used as a wargame teaching tool around the globe.

You Can't Change History!
How do you teach history when the students are able to make it?  This session showcases this debate with a look at a few major historical-oriented serious games projects.  Dive into a perfect example of an everyday dilemma symbolic of the space's design issues.

The Serious Side of eSports
25 years ago skateboarding and BMX biking were relegated to empty swimming pools and the outskirts of parks.  Today they are a huge industry that is the darling of major consumer brands, television networks and even the Olympics, where snowboarding is now a medal sport. Fast forward 25 years and one might be saying the same thing about the emerging eSports scene.  Sports broadcasting, events, and endorsements is a serious business. Find out more how videogame-based sports is a growing industry.

Serious Stuff Gamers Do...
Too often we forget that game players often do very interesting things with games, things we never intended.  In this spirited talk I will show some incredible things gamers are doing with games.  This talk should remind us that one of the most innovative ways to mine gaming for new opportunities outside of entertainment is to look no further than gamers themselves.

ALICE meets the Sims
EA is working with Carnegie Mellon University to take the animation files from its Sims product and integrate it into ALICE a major educational tool for teaching programming.  With its incredible pull among young women, might this tool become a critical way to improve the uptake in programming and computer science education among women students?

World of YourCraft
Constance Steinkuehler doesn't just watch people play Massive Multiplayer games -- she dives right in to the culture and plays right along side in games like Lineage, World of Warcraft (WoW) and more.  The focus of her work has been mapping how the tasks and learning domains in games like WoW are very similar to the world of work that many knowledge based workers and managers in today's most dynamic companies perform.  This research will help inform anyone looking to create derivative learning, collaboration, and occupational environments within online worlds and playspaces.

Is it Cheating, Learning, or Both?
Anyone who follows games knows there are good types of cheating (e.g. Walkthroughs, asking a friend for help, etc.) and not so good (hacks, assistant apps, etc.) but do you understand when cheating actually is a great form of self-initiated learning and when it's a sign something isn't right with your game?  Me neither - but Mia Consalvo, who has been researching cheating in games, does.  In this great talk Mia will help you understand game cheat culture and how it offers incredible insight in how to make great games into great learning communities and how to use why people cheat to make better games.

The Serious Games Fund Raising Fandango
Jerry Heneghan of Virtual Heroes (one of the dev teams for America's Army) has been diligently building his serious games focused studio the past few years.  As part of that effort, he has been working hard to raise investment.  Raising money is not an easy task.  Learning how to hone what serious games is about, what the opportunities are, and matching that with the hard questions investors putting their money on the line are apt to ask is incredibly challenging.  Instead of being humbled by the effort, Jerry is coming to Serious Games Summit to share with all who will listen what he has learned about the appeal and potential business interest investors have in this new field of gaming.  If you are a developer, or anyone looking to sharpen their sales pitch to those who know little about the world of serious games, this is a session that will certainly inform you of the road ahead.

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This is but a sampling of the 50+ sessions we have planned for this year's summit.  The D.C. summit is the largest serious games event of the year. It's also the one that draws the most press and customer attention, especially in the greater D.C. government, military, education, and health communities.

By attending the summit you do more than just get your own education and business opportunities -- you also are helping the great serious games space plant its flag among the critical purchasers of modeling, simulation, training, and education.  Game developers have an opportunity to carve out a significant portion of the billions of dollars spent in these markets once the purchasers in those markets awaken to the skills, resources, and talent game developers have to offer them.  So join us in October, learn more, and immerse yourself in one of the most dynamic growing areasof game development for years to come.

See you there!

Regards,

Ben Sawyer
SGS D.C. COntent Chair