Serious Games Summit DC 2005 Blogging

Serious Games Summit DC 2005 Blogging (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog)

Here’s my schedule for the first day of the Serious Games Summit, which starts in a few minutes here in Arlington, Va., a suburb of Washington D.C. I do enjoy the mixture of commercial, government, educational and indie content, but the biggest draw is probably the dollars at stake to be extracted from government agencies for military training. I’ll check out the booths of course, but the government/military/business angle is not why I’m here.

Signs That I’m Not at a Humanities Conference

  1. Demonstrating the seriousness of the situation: Whatley mentioned that one of his EULA (end-user license agreements) includes the warning “death and dismemberment are not our fault.”

  2. When I asked a question about simulation, Whatley’s response began with, “If I shoot a bullet at you…”

  3. The word “pedgagogy” appears in one of the presentations, not simply to be dismissed as pedestrian and non-theoretical, but in the speech bubble of the beach bully kicking sand in the face of a scrawny little game designer, in a remix of the classic comic book advertisement for body-building snake oil.

  4. To be continued??

Last year there was a T-shirt. This year? A plastic bag with a program, a promotional CD from Anark (one of the sponsors) and a few other fliers. (I overheard one of the conference organizers say that nobody offered to sponsor the t-shirts. Shame.)

I certainly hope there are muffins or cookies somewhere around here. [Update: There are.]

Keynote: Peter Perla and Doug Whatley

What’s So Serious about Game Design? The Art or the Science?

Tim Holt

Healthcare and Forestry — Half-Life 2: Meet Serious Games Modding

I’m conflicted… I’m interested in both of these topics, and may bail out of the first one to visit the second.

Dolly Joseph and Mable Kinzie

Boys [sic] and Girls [sic] Game Play Preferences: Survey Results

Lauren Davis

“Inside our Hidden Agenda: Using Contests to Generate New Ideas for Games in Education” (Never got to this. I’ve actually blogged about the Hidden Agenda effort before, and I would have loved to hear how the project is doing, but Joseph’s presentation held my attention.)

Michael Gibson

Creating Life Experience Through Dramatic Simulations

Sharon Sloane

Exploring Game-Based Instructional Methodologies that Reach the Cognitive and Affective Learning Domains

Ian Bogost

Project Management: Avoiding Mistakes… If I Only Knew Then What I Know Now

Well, it looks like the exhibit hall is supposed to be open now.

Update, 01 Nov: See my liveblogging from day 2

5 thoughts on “Serious Games Summit DC 2005 Blogging

  1. Lou, hello to you too! Dennis, thanks for the update on the cookies and muffins – glad you found them!

  2. Enjoy the conference Dennis! Some conferences I have been to lately gave out t-shirts as an insentive to complete and give back the survey form at the end of the conference so maybe you will still get a t-shirt.

  3. A quick hello to rosemary.

    Dr Jerz–you have TOO much time on your hands to be enjoying this conference AND blogging about it :P lol.

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