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By Glenn Chapman
Videogame makers from around the
world will gather in San Francisco beginning Monday to collaborate
about the future of play.
The 20th annual Game
Developers’ Conference (GDC) is the largest gathering of its kind
and is dedicated to the “art, science and business of games,”
according to its organizers at CMP Technology firm.
Among its features will be
lessons in designing games for Nintendo’s popular new “Wii”
videogame console with motion-sensitive controllers.
Casual and “serious” games
summits will kick-off the weeklong gathering that is expected to
draw more than 12,500 people involved in creating or publishing
videogames.
Casual games are based on
nonviolent strategy, wordplay, puzzles or classic board games as
opposed to warfare, car racing or other action.
“The casual game market has
grown to be an integral part of the videogame industry, making
gamers out of anyone with a PC [personal computer], a mobile phone
or an iPod,” said conference manager Meggan Scavio.
Serious games are those in which
the main motivations are along the lines of teaching, healing or
therapy instead of purely entertainment and profit, according to
RealTime Associates President David Warhol.
The Southern California company
created a “Re-Mission” game that improves the outlooks of
children with cancer and gets them to adhere to treatment programs.
Warhol will present conference
goers with insights into RealTime’s new “Cool School” computer
game designed to teach young children to peacefully resolve
conflicts ranging from bullies to classmates cutting in lines.
US government funding for the
game was inspired by the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in
which two students went on a deadly shooting rampage, according to
Warhol.
“Cool School” lets children
enter a virtual fantasy school where erasers get into tiffs with
chalkboards and balls squabble in the playground.
“It’s not so much a video
game as it is an interactive movie,” Warhol told AFP.
“’Re-Mission’ showed that
games like this work. The serious game industry is really
blossoming.”
• In “Cool School,”
animated objects get into spats based on typical clashes between
children and the players get to choose how to deal with the
conflicts.
• If a child opts for responses
such as “bribery” or “threatening” the scene plays out with
predictably undesirable results. If a player selects a
“compromise” option the scene has a happier ending.
• “’It has universal appeal
because these kinds of conflicts are universal, you can go to a
rural town in China, Japan, France or anywhere and find kids
fighting over toys,” said developmental psychologist Melanie
Killen, a University of Maryland professor who spent years helping
craft the games content.
• “’It focuses on kids in
their world. Ideally, you’d love to have teachers spend an hour a
day on social skills, but pragmatically, they have negative two
minutes of time for it.”
• A challenge facing
serious games is a lack of funding from private publishers that
routinely spurn educational or therapeutic games in favor of
violence-oriented titles such as “Grand Theft Auto,” Killen
said.
•In the “Grand Theft Auto”
video game, points are scored for acts such as stealing cars or
killing prostitutes and police officers.
• “’Serious games are
wonderful, but it is an uphill battle,” said Killen, who told of a
fruitless quest to get private backing for” Cool School.
• “’People have got the
idea that blood and gore and sexually explicit images are what sell.
I think that is a false assumption. If given the chance, parents
would buy high-quality serious games for their children instead.”
• With continued backing
from the US Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, “Cool
School” will begin a pilot program in a school district in the
state of Illinois on Monday, Warhol said.
“ Cool School” will need
private support to build a website capable of taking the game live
online for free play by anyone, according to Warhol.
• France-based Game
Connection will spend two days applying its “matchmaking” skills
to video game creators and publishers and venture capitalists that
pay to get promising titles into the market.
--AFP
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