Phaedra Boinodiris, serious games program manager at IBM, writes a guest editorial on Forbes exploring the way that games can be used to energize and enhance other things besides research projects. The point of her editorial is that researchers have been helped greatly by games created to solve problems that take advantage of "collective intelligence," and global participation.

Organizers of the Gamification Summit announced this morning that they have finalized the agenda and speaker program for the September 15-16 conference occurring in New York City. That agenda includes keynotes, featured talks, design intensives, panels, and workshops that (they hope) teach and inform attendees on the subject. GSummit promises to bring together experts from advertising, healthcare, education, government, media, e-commerce, startups and academia to share knowledge and improve engagement with consumers and employees by using gamification techniques.

The 8th annual Games for Change Festival kicks off today in New York City. The event, which runs until June 22, is taking place at the NYU Skirball Center. The event is dedicated to using games to deal with the most pressing social and political issues that affect the world today by breaking down cultural barriers, shifting perspectives and driving actions in the real world.

This year's event features several sessions addressing games from an international perspective including one focusing on Games For Change in Europe.

In May 2011 the Chamber of Commerce in Valenciennes launched the first European Games for Change Festival. Highlights from the first event will be shared with the audience, including some of the new games and European award winners. The session will be presented by Jean-Michel Blottiere, Owner, NX Publishing; Sandra Faggioni, Digital Creation Project Manager, CCIV / POLE IMAGE NPDC and several European award-winners.

Five students from the sixth-grade class at Milton M. Somers Middle School (in Southern Maryland) found themselves playing video games in school to learn about why underage drinking isn't all that cool. The game asked questions about healthy lifestyles and the dangers of underage drinking and provided moments of activity to keep things interesting. It was created by the Century Council, an Arlington, Virginia-based nonprofit group funded by a group of distillers that includes Diageo, Bacardi and Brown-Forman.

Here's an interesting story about real world technology that has a minor connection to gaming. Developed for Richland, Washington-based CH2M Hill, the technology is called the Sand Mantis, and it is described by its creator as a new tool that takes rock salt-based waste, and turns it into a fine, powdery waste.

The technology, which is used inside giants tanks, is controlled using a PlayStation 2 controller. After the Rock Salt waste is smashed into a fine powder, it can easily be sucked out of the tank and disposed of. The technology helps CH2M Hill reach their goal of less than 2,700 gallons of waste per tank. It will also reduces cleanup costs; the $2.7 million dollar tool replaces the original $12 million per tank cost estimate. CH2M Hill is best known for creating engineering solutions for waste management and water treatment.

The winners of the Youth Prize for original game designs have been selected by the National STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) Video Game Challenge. The 12 U.S. students (grades 5-8) were announced by United States chief technology officer Aneesh Chopra.

The science-themed "You Make Me Sick!" was awarded the Grand Prize in the Developer Prize category, and a collection of math games called "NumberPower: Numbaland!" received the Collegiate and Impact prizes. Filament Games' Dan Norton and Dan White won the grand prize, and will receive $50,000 for their game about bacteria and viruses.

C|Net reports that the citizens of San Francisco are apparently ticked off at THQ - and by extension its partner GameStop - for releasing hundreds of balloons into the sky as part of a mock protest of North Korea - part of a marketing ploy for its new game Homefront. The balloon release happened during the Game Developers Conference. Many of the balloons had a postcard-size flyer attached to it advertising the game. People in the downtown area saw the balloons soaring in the sky, but were disgusted as they watched them land in the San Francisco Bay. That is when some residents began to express their anger. The anger was aimed at GameStop, which was a promotional partner with THQ and whose name appeared on the balloons.

University of Minnesota doctoral candidate Kyong Shim was practically laughed off campus when she said she wanted to study video games. But three years later Shim is getting the last laugh as various government agencies and the United States Army utilize her data and expertise for training and research on human behavioral patterns.

The Army has signed on to study and use the teamwork aspect of MMORPGs to improve communications and teamwork when tackling a common goal. Shim and other researchers from universities across the country sifted through terabytes of anonymous EverQuest II user data provided by Sony Online Entertainment to find patterns and communication characteristics. Sony provided researchers with anonymous player communications, game logs, and other game data.

Tickets for the 2011 Gamification Summit have sold out according to the event's organizers. Organizers say that, for those who were not able to purchase tickets, live streaming coverage via Fora.tv will be available. Those who register to watch the live streaming coverage before January 14 will receive special $149 early bird pricing. After January 14, the rate will go up to $199. In case you've never heard of it, gamification is the use of game mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences in a non-gaming environment.

At the event, Liz Gannes of AllThingsDigital will interview Jane McGonigal, author of "Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Happy and How They Can Help Us Change the World." Liz Gannes has been covering Silicon Valley business technology since 2004 and is the founder of NewTeeVee. Additional speakers include the CMO of RecycleBank Samantha Skey, Ian Bogost of Georgia Institute of Technology and Evan Tanna of Shopkick.

A study from earlier this year may motivate parents to throw a toothbrush or two into the gift queue this year alongside those much-coveted video games. According to a necro-posting from Dentalplan.com citing an April 2010 study from the University of Iowa, a tooth brush or two in the stockings or wrapped up with a video game might be a good idea.

In case you do not recall the study from earlier this year, it found that teenagers who spent a significant amount of time playing video games were more likely to develop tooth decay because of the food and drink they consumed.

Teenagers 12 - 19 years old consumed more sugary snacks and soda while playing video games, the study found. Consuming these kinds of foods in large quantities leads to tooth decay and other dental problems if a regular dental hygiene regiment is not followed.

The Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA) has released a free, downloadable videogame that is designed to teach youngsters disaster preparedness.

The Day the Earth Shook poses the scenario of an earthquake occurring along the New Madrid or Wabash Valley Seismic Zones in southern Illinois.

A new game challenges players to save the entire planet. The strategy game, Fate of the World, charges players with trying to protect the world's climate and resources while managing a growing population demanding more power, food and living space.

"Fate of the World is a scenario-based game where you run Earth for 200 years and you save it or potentially destroy it. The whole power is in your hands," said the game's British creator Gobion Rowlands.

The player takes charge of a Global Environment Organization (GEO), which has the power to make decisions that affect the entire world. Cue New World Order music.. Players can impose policies such as banning logging in the Amazon rainforest, making all Europe's public transportation run on electricity, or enforcing a one-child policy on Asia.

The Illinois Emergency Management Agency has unveiled a new game for children that teaches them about emergency preparedness. The game, "The Day the Earth Shook," teaches players about items needed to build a disaster kit, shows safe and dangerous locations in a home when an earthquake hits, and other important safety tips that are useful in dangerous situations.

The game is the latest from Illinois Emergency Management Agency, which already launched an activity book for younger kids and a public service announcement for high schoolers earlier this year.

UK developer Red Redemption is finishing up work on a global strategy game for the PC that will have players attempting to solve a variety of world crises, including climate change, over population and an under abundance of food.

Fate of the World is set in the year 2020, and will have players serve as the president of the Global Environmental Organization, described in the New York Times as a “fictional group with the ability to dictate economic, environmental and social policies around the world,” or, as a Red Redemption developer labeled it, “a U.N. with teeth.”

Newsweek has released its annual list of how the top 500 largest publicly traded companies in America rank in terms being environmentally friendly.

Electronic Arts clocked in at number 378 on this year’s Green List (it was number 381 last year), while Activision Blizzard took 391st on the list, improving from last year’s ranking of 416.

On the retail side, Office Depot grabbed the highest Green ranking, coming in at number 18 overall, followed by Wal-Mart (#51), Target (#61), Best Buy (#86), Amazon.com (#162) and GameStop (#318).

Dell came in first overall on the list, with Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Johnson & Johnson and Intel rounding out the top 5.

In light of a seemingly endless amount of natural catastrophes impacting the world recently, the Australian arm of Save the Children has released an iPhone/iPad/iPod app designed to highlight just how much work disaster relief efforts entail.

Earthquake Response (Apple Store link) revolves around an 8.2 magnitude earthquake hitting an island in the Atlantic Ocean. With thousands injured and dead, you, the player, have been sent to the island by Save the Children to distribute aid. 14 levels of play will have users getting people into the correct aid tents, keeping supply lines stocked, directing supply deliveries and prioritizing people’s needs.

As part of an attempt to clarify regulations relating to the upcoming Tennessee turkey hunting season, a local judge set aside some time in order to offer some advice to youngsters.

Hamilton County General Sessions Court Judge Bob Moon, as quoted in The Chattanoogan, stated:

If young people spent more time in the woods and on the water and away from malls, video games and televisions, our juvenile delinquency and crime numbers would drop.

Moon, who used a bow and arrow to bag two turkeys last season, added, “Very few drug addicts and dangerous criminals are outdoorsmen.”

The Marion Country turkey hunting rules are actually quite confusing; make sure to click through to The Chattanoogan for a full breakdown as detailed by Judge Moon.


Pic via

Game developer VSTEP is putting a special Greenpeace campaign in its upcoming ship simulation game, Ship Simulator Extremes. The Greenpeace campaign is what the company calls "one of three realistic campaigns" that will be featured in the game when it is released later this month.

The campaign lets players sail Greenpeace vessels like the Esperanza to confront various anti-environmental forces and evildoers including polluters who dump oil and illegal toxic waste into the ocean, whale hunting vessels and more. Players will also be able to take control of the Rainbow Warrior III a full year before its actual completion as well. Finally, the game will feature "nine historical Greenpeace missions" complete with full motion documentary footage and interviews with Greenpeace Captain Pete Wilcox as a reward.

For a sneak peek of the Greenpeace part of the game, check out this video. Ship Simulator Extremes will be released on August 27 at retail and through various digital distribution channels.

As new reports indicate that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico at the hands of BP is now the largest “accidental” release of oil into water in history, South Pawlitico has released a fun (and admittedly simple) web-based game allowing players to try their own hand at plugging the broken wellhead.

Gulf of Mexicoil lets users attempt to utilize duct tape, old tires, the kitchen sink and crazy glue to stop the spewing, all while fighting ocean currents.

The worst oil spill of all time was intentional, according to CNN, and took place during the Gulf War when Iraqi army personnel released 240 million gallons of oil into the Persian Gulf. A Washington Post story indicates that the Deepwater Horizon disaster resulted in 205.8 million gallons (or 4.9 million barrels) of oil spilled.

Beijing, China is the next stop for AMD's Activate! initiative. The world's second largest chip maker announced that the Dandelion Middle School in Beijing is now offering a course in game development. AMD says that its curriculum is designed to help teens improve critical science, technology, and math skills by allowing kids to develop games using a suite of specially designed software development tools.

Announced earlier this year, Activate is a program that enables kids ages 13 - 15 to "easily design and program video games." Activate! was created by PETLab and funded by a $77,000 AMD Foundation grant in support of AMD Changing the Game. PETLab is a joint project of Games for Change and Parsons The New School for Design. You can learn more about PETLab by visiting petlab.parsons.edu.

YouTube user Elude87 utilized the Unreal Development Kit to show what 25,000 barrels would look like, whether those barrels were filled with oil or not.

Dubbing the outcome a “mass physics demonstration,” the animation shows a stack of 25,000 barrels reaching 15,000 feet high, quite impressive until you realize that the latest estimates of the amount of oil pouring out of the Deepwater Horizon are being pegged at between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels per day.

That’s a lot of oil.

Another YouTube user (erikrass) rendered a video response showing the same type of simulation, only using 50,000 barrels.

Miller-McCune went inside the University of Southern California’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) and came out armed with information on new trainers and simulators helping U.S. troops.

The center is hard at work on fleshing out (get it?) virtual human technology, which the piece’s author states “will most certainly be used in many training and educational roles” in the future. The technology will also inevitably make its way to consumer-based videogames, at least according to ICT’s Bill Swartout, who thinks we will all be talking to our games and “interacting with people who’re talking back” eventually.

One of the ICT’s latest creations is the Mobile Counter-IED Interactive Trainer (MCIT). As shown in the embedded video, the trainer, housed in trailers (hence, mobile) lets users train on both sides of the “game,” both as soldier’s looking to spot IEDs and insurgent’s trying to figure out the best place to plant them.

Legacy Interactive has announced plans to create a web-based game designed to teach kids how to prepare for hazards and emergencies.

Disaster Hero is being developed in conjunction with the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), with funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and, in turn, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), under which FEMA operates. Due out sometime in 2011, the game promises to “focus on what to do before, during and after a disaster,” with an emphasis on “getting an emergency kit, having an emergency plan and being informed.”

ACEP President Dr. Angela Gardner added, "This project to develop an educational program for children using a game platform will be a unique approach to teaching kids to have an active role in home disaster planning.”

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The latest Virtual Shackles comic just nails it.

Go to their website for a larger version and give them a Digg if you approve.


Thanks Andrew!

The growing reliance of the U.S. military on high-tech recreations of foreign villages and their inhabitants has some social scientists concerned.

A Boston.com story on the subject begins by outlining the work of University of Pennsylvania engineer Barry Silverman, who has been funded (by an unnamed U.S. agency) to the tune of over $500,000 in order to recreate a 3D computer model of an actual village in Afghanistan. Silverman is supplied with data from U.S. Army social scientists, who interviewed residents of the actual village.

Dubbed “human terrain mapping, it’s hoped that this technology can assist the U.S. in fighting terrorists and insurgents, but the whole idea has Hugh Gusterson, a George Mason University anthropologist, concerned. Gusterson asked, “Are we going to detain someone if a computer predicts that he will become an insurgent?"

He continued:

As part of its support of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), airplane manufacturer Airbus recently conducted a survey of over 10,000 kids between the ages of 5-18 (from ten different countries) in a bid to explore the youngster’s perception of nature.

Asked what their favorite pastime was, 17.2 percent indicated it was watching TV, while 34.3 percent said it was playing computer games. 30 percent said that spending time outdoors was their favorite activity.

When queried on what was most important to them, 26 percent answered “playing on the computer,” and 14 percent answered “watching TV,” while saving the environment was tops to only 4 percent of the kids polled.

A generator-powered arcade in Kabul, Afghanistan provides the city’s inhabitants a welcome respite from the ongoing war and helps keep wayward kids off the street and out of trouble.

14-yeard old Ubaydollah Sharafian spoke to the Christian Science Monitor about the arcade, saying, “We come here to play games and relax from street-begging.”

All such forms of entertainment were banned when Afghanistan was under Taliban rule, perhaps leading inhabitants to embrace the ability to forget their troubles for a few minutes even more than might be the norm.

As a youngster in the midst of a game succinctly stated, “I don’t want this game to finish, I want to keep on playing forever.”

Another passage from the CSM article:

In a bid to drum up community involvement among residents of Boston’s Chinatown, local leaders commissioned the development of a videogame.

Participatory Chinatown was developed by project partner Muzzy Lane Software, in conjunction with the Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC), Emerson College’s New Media program, and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC). Funding was provided by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning Competition.

A description of the game via the MAPC:

The Harris Teeter chain of supermarkets has teamed up with recycling advocate MyBoneYard in order to debut a program that offers rewards and cash for unused electronic devices, including videogames.

Harris Teeter will reward recyclers with store gift cards for recycled items, or those discarding unused items can choose to donate the money received to the supermarket’s Together in Education program, which provides funds to public schools.

A handy website informs consumers of the value of their used goods beforehand. For example, a working original Xbox console, with all power and A/V cords, will bring a recycler $8, while a similarly outfitted PlayStation 2 is worth $7 and a Wii brings $78. Cell phones, MP3 players, GPS units, computers, cameras and monitors are among the other acceptable items. Harris Teeter will also provide prepaid shipping labels for items.