It’s not often that a conference features speakers as diverse as Sims creator Will Wright and Joint Forces Command boss General John Mattis, but when the symposium focuses on promoting the use of videogames in the Department of Defense, such an odd pairing makes sense.
Dovetailing nicely with recent news that the U.S. military is planning a larger role for videogames in training, GameTech 2010 takes place in Orlando, Florida from March 29-31 and focuses on “gaming technologies that enhance warfighter training.”
Wright’s keynote subject is Games are Tools for Science and Society, while General Mattis will give a talk on Serving the Training Needs of the Small Unit and Infantry Soldier. An additional keynote from Major General Mel Spiese, USMC Training and Education Command, will discuss The Role of Games in Training Marines.
The conference will also be the culmination for a pair of game-related design competitions, the Federal Virtual Worlds Challenge and the Innovations in DoD Gaming competition.
GameTech 2010 serves up three days of sessions. Day one focuses on tutorials, while day two and three serve up gaming and virtual world tracks such as Mobile Medic and Game Applications, USMC Insurgent Mindset Training, Connecting Soldiers to Mobile Apps and Integrating Games, Voice Recognition and Artificial Intelligence.
In a demonstration of how forward thinking the conference is, those who wish to can attend the conference virtually, using their Second Life avatar.
