At SGS D.C., attendees take part in sessions led by the brightest minds in the serious game industry today.

Click here to view all 2006 sessions.

Sessions are organized within six overarching tracks, click the track name to see sessions within the given track:

Assesment & Results
All games must perform through commercial sales or critical reviews. Serious games, however, are challenged with performance that must be measured by more than user popularity. Whether it is meeting the learning objectives, satisfying the project mission goals, or enabling a less quantitative objective, we must define, measure, and provide results. This track combines case reports with overall sessions about providing assessment within games, and showcasing emerging results from successful projects.

Behind the Game
Understanding the subtle tradeoffs that developers deal with daily, how projects are budgeted and scheduled, and which technologies are most relevant are critical needs that can't be taken for granted. At the same time the game industry is one of the most dynamic industries around and even those who have mastered the basics must constantly keep up. This track includes presentations that demystify and debate the game development process, industry, talent, and technologies for non-entertainment oriented customers and projects.

Business & Deals
Most serious games don't sit on the shelf at the local game store. Instead, this market requires the user to buy in prior to the development. The result is a unique business environment for game developers that requires customers to go from 0 to 60 in short order to be able to properly define a project, recruit the right talent, and set up the correct relationship that will enable a project's success. This track informs customers and developers about the critical business models and methods that have enabled the current market to emerge, while also setting the stage for actual deals to take place.

Learning & Instructional Theory
At the heart of any serious game is a combination of exciting new ideas about learning and well-defined existing instructional methodologies. This track illustrates how the worlds of cognitive science, instructional design, and game development can work in unison to build better learning environments, applications, and methods. It also analyzes the inherent learning in games and the many meta-game aspects to learning that inhabit the field.

Products Within Projects
Serious games are rarely standalone products. They are a combination of projects and products, with the game being only one part of a major effort. The success of any serious game itself may reside in part or even whole in how the entire project operates. This track provides an exploration of the delta and relationship that exist between the core serious game product and its parent project.

Serious Game Design
Designing serious games requires that developers think about new issues related to learning, instruction, assessment, usability, and much more. This track focuses on the unique design issues related to serious games, and on tried and true game design methods that fuel interest in games as learning environments.

Click here to view 2005 conference sessions.

With an SGS Pass, attendees may choose sessions from any of the tracks offered, or follow one track from beginning to end.