SGS D.C. Developer Showcase
What do you see as the most significant obstacles that must be overcome as a contributer to the 'serious games' space? 1. Determining what aspects are important to serious users and improving fidelity in those areas – for example removing ‘game elements’ that might lead to negative training. 2. Fostering an understanding of how our software technology can be used in training – quite often potential customers don’t understand how they can use games in training, experimentation etc. What was the general reaction you experienced of attendees to your organization's presence at the Serious Games Summit D.C. Event?Military and first responders were very happy to see us there, but most other attendees did not see how our technology could help them out. This is understandable – tanks rolling around a battlefield does not offer a lot to educators or those interested in medical simulation, for example. Was there anything that disappointed you at the show? I was very disappointed that there was no-one exhibiting low-cost tools for education. Six educators asked me how our game could help them teach students. As this is not a market I am interested in (yet) I could not help them. I think you should lower the cost of exhibiting and try and entice smaller game developers and get a wider range of games exhibited at the show. This is vitally important! You need more examples of real games available for education on the show floor. Where do you and your company see the market heading, say, in the next five years? I have no doubt that the serious games market will continue to expand as potential users begin to understand how games can assist in learning (we as an industry need to assist in this process). I think smaller companies will become more important as budgets tighten, and game technology becomes more affordable (initiatives like Delta3D will pose a real threat to bigger, more established companies in the serious games space). You need to entice these smaller companies to exhibit at future SGS events.
Have you seen any trends within the space that have emerged, good or bad, since the serious games movement has begun to gain support? I have seen that many games lack fundamental requirements for *military* training – such as comprehensive after action review or rapid terrain development. I have also seen games adopted too rapidly (especially by the military) with little academic rigor and this is quite dangerous. Lastly, do you plan on having a continued presence at the Serious Games Summit conference going forward, and if so what did you learn from this year that you will do different in years to come? We will have a presence at all north American SGS conferences for years to come. It was a very well organized, informative event and was certainly worthwhile.
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