David guest blogs for the New York Times
David has a neat column up on the Freakonomics blog of the New York Times that draws from our book. Take a look!
A tale of two conferences
Both David and I were giving talks today, at two different conferences. Dave was speaking to an audience of game industry veterans and investors at GameON, where he gave a keynote drawing from our book. Dave argued that people in the game industry need to be thinking about how their products can be used for marketing, training, and productivity. His talk was blogged by Gamasutra.
I was running a session for the MIT Innovation Lab on the use of games for innovation, but this session was targeted at managers from Fortune 500 companies. We had speakers including Luis von Ahn of Carnegie Mellon, Phaedra Boinodiris of IBM, Ross Smith of Microsoft, ARG designer Dave Szulborski, and Bill Ferguson of BBN. They spoke about the way games are transforming everything from work productivity to recruiting, and I’ll be posting presentations later in the week, and will try to link to them from here.
More reviews and write-ups
Changing the Game has been the subject of features in the two big gaming-industry news sites: Edge and Gamasutra. We also were the suggested weekend read in the widely-distributed Smartbrief newsletter.
Using games to prevent suicide
Edge has published an interesting article about the US Army’s new suicide prevention game. From that article:
Specialist Kyle Norton is a 19-year old soldier two months into his first deployment in Iraq. Already lonely for his fiancée, Anne, Kyle receives a “Dear John” email along with the news that Anne is pregnant with his friend’s baby. Feeling as though his life is turning into a bad soap opera, he initially receives some support from his buddy, Specialist Brad Blair. Unfortunately, Kyle is soon hit with another devastating loss–Brad is killed in an ambush…
While not the story lines usually associated with video games, reality-based situations that test the emotional resiliency of today’s soldiers are redefining the next generation of military gaming and simulation. Internal battles such as Kyle’s, portrayed in the Army’s new suicide prevention game, Beyond the Front, confront users with complex personal challenges in the context of war.
News round-up
There are lots of interesting articles on games and business recently. A slightly older one is a BusinessWeek slideshow on 33 ways that game companies can make money from games, some of these methods are only relevant to game companies, but they offer interesting hints as to how game companies and other businesses can work together. A Swiss engineering company is using techiques right out of games to create compelling point-of-sale displays. Another article looks at the way some games tackle serious issues, ranging from tragedy to war, in an intellectual way. And, on the lighter side, humor site Something Awful imagines what business skills a few well-known games might advertise themselves as teaching.
TMR ranks Changing the Game one of 10 best books on training
The Training Media Review has an in-depth review of the portions of our book dealing with games for teaching and training, and put us in their top ten list. They give us four stars, and called us one of the best products of 2008, writing that “Corporate training executives now have a single source for facts and case examples (ammunition, so to speak) to assist in the argument to justify investment in gaming genres.”
The presidential race comes to games
With confirmation today that Obama is advertising in billboards in the Xbox 360 racing game Burnout Paradise, Presidential politics have apparently started to take games seriously as way of reaching voters. Less serious is this pro-Obama voting simulator. There are also prediction games using the presidential election, and Ian Bogost’s Campaign Rush.
Allstate uses games to test mature drivers
I was particularly intrigued by news that Allstate is piloting a program which seeks to determine if playing video games could make better drivers out of those over the age of 50. This news caught my eye for two reasons:
- If the study is conclusive and positive, Allstate plans to offer discounts to mature drivers who pass similar online tests, and,
- The games in question are not driving simulators, as one might assume. They are various types of “brain-challenging” games designed to test abilities such as “visual alertness.” InSight, the developer of the games, claims that they can reduce dangerous driving maneuvers by up to 40 percent and significantly increase reaction rates.
Jewel Diver is one of five InSight games being tested by Allstate. In Jewel Diver, players must track multiple moving objects — fish marked with red gems — as they float around in an ocean with other, similar looking fish.
This article is a nice illustration of one of the arguments in Changing the Game: that games can be used to educate, screen, and market to people using abstract gameplay and virtual metaphors, not just simulations. (The marketing angle is particularly compelling, in this case. Imagine the following: “Congratulations, you scored in the top 20% of all players! Odds are, you’re a better driver than the average Joe. Allstate is pleased to offer you 10% off your insurance premium…”)
The Financial Times mentions Changing the Game
The Financial Times has a very interesting piece on the future of serious games, citing all sorts of interesting examples, including a new “charity ARG” from the Red Cross and the use of the LittleBigPlanet game engine to graphically present Sony’s financial results. They also quote from our book about the history of games for training, and talk about some of the ways games are becoming increasingly critical to today’s businesses.
Educational milestone: the $3m “Games for Learning Institute”
Microsoft and New York University have announced the creation of the Games for Learning Institute (G4LI), which will identify the qualities of video games that best engage students, and develop personalized teaching strategies that harness those qualities. While Microsoft and NYU are apparently the key founding organizations, G4LI participants include Columbia University, the City University of New York, Dartmouth College, Parsons, Polytechnic Institute of NYU, the Rochester Institute of Technology and Teachers College. Total seed funding for G4LI: a cool $3 million.
Changing the Game (order via Amazon or B&N) is a fast-paced tour of the many ways in which games, already an influential part of millions of people’s lives, have become a profoundly important part of the business world. From connecting with customers, to attracting and training employees, to developing new products and spurring innovation, games have introduced a new level of fun and engagement to the workplace.
Changing the Game introduces you to the ways in which games are being used to enhance productivity at Microsoft, increase profits at Burger King, and raise employee loyalty at Sun Microsystems, among other remarkable examples. It is proof that work not only can be fun--it should be.