In order to make its safety training more appealing to workers, the Louisiana Transportation Research Center’s (LTRC) Transportation Training and Education Center (TTEC) is trying out a pilot program that involves videogame-based teaching.

The center is now testing a simulator that allows participants to man an on-screen avatar as they run though required procedures in simulated work zones. Activities center on properly flagging equipment, operating flags correctly and following other correct safety actions.

TTEC Associate Director Glynn Cavin told 2TheAdvocate that the new training may eventually replace the currently employed conventional classroom method, which some highway workers find “unappealing,” to which he added, “It just doesn’t work well.”
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Georgia’s aggressive tax breaks for interactive developers seem to be paying off for the state, if you believe a rosy picture painted by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

All in all, the piece estimated that around 70 companies “affiliated with videogame production” operate in Georgia today. The economic impact of such companies on the local economy was pegged at $68.9 million in 2008, while a figure of $49.9 million was assigned to 2009, though that number is expected to double once companies that have not yet filed for tax incentives do so.

Among the lures that make Georgia an attractive home for game developers is a sizeable tax credit of 20 percent for investments that surpass $500,000, with an additional 10 percent in breaks up for grabs if the state’s logo is embedded in the game.
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The Redmond, Washington-based DigiPen Institute of Technology officially opened its brand new 100,000 square-foot facility on Friday and even received a proclamation from Redmond Mayor John Marchione that declared it “DigiPen Day.”

Founder Claude Comair, who began the first incarnation of DigiPen in Vancouver, before moving it to Redmond in 1997 to be closer to Nintendo of America, started the festivities with a speech (as seen in the embedded video from TechFlash), saying, “This building is just a machine to build people.”
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It’s not quite the prerequisite one might be used to seeing for a college course: “basic knowledge of and experience playing StarCraft.”

The University of Florida is offering a class utilizing StarCraft, in order to assist in the teaching of resource management skills, a theory which Ph.D Candidate and instructor Mate Poling outlined for the Technology Review (thanks Joystiq), saying, “In StarCraft you're managing a lot of different units and groups of different capacities.”

He added, “It's not a stretch to think of that in the business world or in the work of a healthcare administrator.”

Additionally:

Poling points out that people who manage hospitals, factories, small businesses and, say, nuclear power plants all have to manage people who have different abilities, and that they might have learned a thing or two about this process from StarCraft, which demands the same kind of resource and unit management. Read More

The NYU Game Center had added Game Designer Eric Zimmerman (pictured) to its ranks as Visiting Assistant Art Professor.

Zimmerman is co-author, with Katie Salen, of the game design book Rules of Play and was a co-founder of Gamelab, which created a range of games including Diner Dash. Zimmerman has already helped to plan the curriculum for the GameCenter over the past year and will teach Introduction to Game Design and Advanced Game Design courses at the school.

NYU Game Center Interim Chair Frank Lantz said of Zimmerman’s appointment, “His addition on a full-time basis is an indication of the Game Center’s commitment to bringing together the most important and influential scholars and designers in the field in order to build a world-class program in game design.”

The NYU Game Center was started in 2008 and is described as “an independent, multi-school center for the research, design and development of digital games.”
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While Iowa State University is home to anti-videogame researchers Craig Anderson and Douglas Gentile, the school is also about to launch a videogame development competition for its students.

Armed with a $50,000 grant from the Motorola Foundation, faculty members Anson Call, an Associate Professor of Integrated Studio Arts, and Chris Johnson, a Lecturer in Computer Science, are running the competition, which will feature teams of three compete in a trio of categories: serious games, PC/console games and mobile games. The makeup of teams will consist of one designer, one programmer and one business major.
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Last week we ran a story from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) in which it discussed the growth of game-related degrees offered in U.S. schools and universities. One of eight states tagged as not offering such degrees, however, took a little onus with its exclusion.

In a list of schools offering videogame-related degrees on the ESA website, eight states are missing—Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, West Virginia and Wyoming. Arkansas officials took time out to argue their case in a piece running on the City Wire, stating that the ESA’s report “does not accurately reflect ongoing efforts to provide video gaming degree options to incoming students.”
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A study of 626 Honk Kong Chinese students, who averaged about 10 years old, indicated that while playing massively multiplayer online games appears to contribute to a kid’s psychological well-being, overall time spent playing computer games had a negative correlation with their academic performance.

Dr. Angel Nga-man Leung and Prof. Catherine McBride (pictured) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Department of Psychology carried out the study (PDF), which indicated that students spent 67 minutes per day, on average, playing MMOs, 44 minutes on solitary computer games, 44 minutes per day using handheld games and 31 minutes a day playing home video consoles. In gender specific results, boys played more minutes per day in each category when compared to their female counterparts.

The students were also asked to compare their real-life friends against friends from their online games. The results caused the researchers to declare: Read More

According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), 300 U.S. colleges, universities and art schools will offer videogame-related degrees in 2010-2011, representing almost 20 percent growth from the 2009-2010 timeframe.

The growth in this sector has continued unabated, with a reported 220 schools offering video game design, development, programming or art curriculums in 2008-2009 and around 250 in 2009-2010. California is still the leader in terms of schools offering game-related degrees with 50 institutions, followed by New York (26), Texas (21) Illinois (17) and Florida (15).

ESA Senior Vice President for Communications and Industry Affairs Rich Taylor commented, “While computer and video games have been a source of entertainment for decades, our society is increasingly recognizing the broader uses of games and their positive impact. Whether it is in healthcare, education, business or government, schools across the country see the value of games and are training their students to meet the demand.”
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Carrianne Howard had a dream: to design videogames for a living. That dream went awry when she realized that a degree she spent almost $70,000 on wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. Now she's a stripper in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It sounds like the punch line to a joke, but Howard isn't laughing.

Howard dreamed of developing video games, so she enrolled in a program at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, a for-profit college partially owned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. But after spending $70,000 on the degree she came to the conclusion that it was worthless. When she went to find a job with her diploma proudly in hand, she figured out that it meant nothing and that it wasn't recognized by most employers in the sector. Howard settled for a $12 an hour job recruiting employees for video game companies. She lost that job, which wasn’t even close to what she was looking for, a year later when her department was shut down.

These days the 26-year-old woman makes her living by stripping at a topless club. Read More

The UK’s first Communication Champion for kids thinks that long car rides are the perfect chance for children to “double their vocabulary,” but that the proliferation of in-car entertainment devices like games and DVD players, if enacted during a trip, eliminate any chance for growth.

Jean Gross issued the warning, stating that kids from affluent families, who were more likely to be able to outfit their cars with the electronic devices in question, were more at risk.

Gross stated:

I remember [when my children were little] we did spotting games in the car, but with the Nintendo DS and other hand-held video games it's going to be more affluent parents whose children have problems learning to speak, not just those from poorer homes who have less exposure to a wide range of language. Read More

Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS), in conjunction with Learning Port Strategies, is gearing up to roll out a new learning tool for students, one that will combine “serious game technology with training.”

Dubbed Learning in a Virtual Environment (L.i.V.E.), the program will consist, at first, of two components: a “repository” for virtual games created around science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) called the Virtual High School, and a challenge for students to create a pitch for a STEM-based videogame, which is entitled The Contest.

Two additional aspects of the program are planned as well—Gamification Boot Camp, in which teachers are instructed on gaming vocabulary and technology and how to implement it alongside traditional teaching strategies, and the LPS Loft, billed as “a group of gaming professionals and tech-minded individuals who will join teachers in reviewing student story pitches and developing the first level of a game, based on the winning Contest pitches.”
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A school in Norway is turning its sights to a computer game for assistance in teaching nursing students how to excel at a tedious, and sometimes difficult to master task, that has no room for error.

As it stands now, University of Stavanger nursing students have three chances to hand in a perfect exam paper on the subject of drug calculations, reports ScienceDaily. Unfortunately, failing the exam is a common practice, with the school stating that between 36 and 39 percent of the students fail the test on their first or second attempts. Other schools report up to 50 percent failure rates.

Atle Løkken, Director of NettOp, the University’s web-based study group, thinks it’s “high time” (no pun intended) to “try something new.” To that end, the school expects to roll out a computer game on the subject next month, which will serve as an additional aid to students.
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The University of Central Florida is developing a game designed to teach pre-teen girls how to fend off peer pressure-driven sex.

A report on the game by an Orlando Fox affiliate bills the title as promoting abstinence among kids and works by using “simulation and digital puppetry.” Charles Hughes, a UCF Computer Science Professor described it by saying, “…one person controls many characters by jumping into the skin.”

The price tag of the game was put at around $434,000, which seems exorbitant until you consider that the game makes use of motion-capture suits and infra-red lights which enable users to control the on-screen avatars. The game is expected to be completed next year.

A Fox anchor introduced the story by noting that “It is your money and the University of Central Florida is using it for a surprising project.”

While a good portion of the America's media and child advocacy groups jumped all over The Boy Scouts of America's video game related awards, some, like Bill Walsh, think it's a good idea. Walsh also tackles a similar media related award for the Girl Scouts that teaches about the positive and negative value of watching television.

At first glance these awards sounded like a bad idea to parents who want the scouting experience to center on learning about the Wilderness; but that's a pretty hypocritical approach considering all the awards and merit badges that deal with issues and skills that might not necessarily have anything to do with the scouting life.

Walsh points out the obvious: we now live in a media focused society, and taking the Rudolph Steiner-like approach to technology like television and video games isn't all the helpful. Instead, these awards are a motivation to teach kids about the media they consume on a daily basis. These award programs also reveal something that child advocacy groups don't want to admit: there are good things about television and videogames.

Here's a lengthy excerpt that brings home the crux of Walsh's argument: Read More

Voting is now open in the Apps for Healthy Kids competition, a part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign designed to motivate kids to become more physically active and eat healthier.

After registering with the website, users can vote for their favorite apps across a variety of categories—Calorie Content, Menu Planner, My Pyramid, Nutrition Facts and Physical Activity.

In addition to public votes, a panel of luminaries, including ESA President Michael Gallagher, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, LucasArts Software Engineer Eric Johnston, thatgamecompany Producer Robin Hunicke and Google Game Advocate Mark DeLoura, will weigh in with their favorite selections.

The Grand Prize Winner receives a $10,000 prize, with $4,500 going to the runner up. Voting ends around August 14.

As one Guardian author wondered what happened to the ambition of boys, citing videogames as at least a contributing factor, another Guardian columnist fired back, defending games as part of the solution.

Will Hutton’s Sunday column examined the possible reasons why society is churning out “so many disaffected, troubled and disengaged young men.” Hutton argued that “the great male demotivator is the risk of loss of face.” He continued:

One of the reasons that boys do not try harder is that the penalties for disengagement are so low – indeed, there are even rewards, at least in the sense that if you don't try, you can't fail. Much better to smoke dope, hang out and obsessively play computer games all day. Read More

Ogmento, a company that sees the future of gaming rooted in "augmented reality," (games that combine the real word with virtual worlds) is shoring up its ranks with three video game industry veterans. The company announced today that it has hired three people that have collectively worked for such companies as Looking Glass, Pandemic, Sony Online, Electronic Arts Mobile, Alchemic Productions, and more. The three new hires are Rick Ernst, who will serve as lead game designer; Tim Hernandez, who has been named Director of Production; and James Chung who has signed on as the company's new Art Director.

Rick Ernst is a 15 year veteran of the video games industry having worked for such companies as Looking Glass, Pandemic and Sony Online, and independently as a contractor and consultant. He is also the co-founder of Alchemic Productions in Los Angeles, a production company that works with artists, film makers and authors. Read More

Maryland’s Anne Arundel Country Fire Department is about to receive a brand new, $315,000 training simulator that will allow fledgling firefighters to practice driving without having to leave the firehouse.

Current training is done in real trucks, which is cost prohibitive and dangerous—the department had 671 vehicular accidents between 2003 and 2008, costing taxpayers an estimated $3 million and injuring 41 firemen—according to local CBS affiliate WJZ.

The story offered the nugget that “crashing in a simulator is not as dangerous” as in real life.

The federal government was said to be picking up most of the tab for the simulator.

The accompanying image shows a similar simulator from Doron Precision Systems.

A new study into the use of videogames and other emergent media in medical education found that students were overwhelmingly in favor of the implementation of such technology into their coursework.

"Medical Student Attitudes Toward Video Games and Related New Media Technologies In Medical Education" (PDF) was authored by Frederick Kron, Craig Gjerde, Ananda Sen and Michael Fetters. The study queried 217 medical students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Michigan, of which 53 percent were female.

109 of the respondents were “self-identified game players,” and the survey provided a unique look into the gaming habits of college medical students. 70 percent said that time spent playing games had decreased since starting professional school, while the top answers to why they play were “help me relax” (77%), “fun way to spend time with existing friends,” (67%) and “allow me to avoid studying” (63%).

Males were also 4.4 times more likely to play games than their female counterparts.
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Last week 200 health professional gathered to listen to eight speakers talk about ways to help combat childhood obesity in Charleston, West Virginia. One of the ways that West Virginia - which many in other states say are pioneers in the fight - is doing this is through a partnership with Konami and the West Virginia School system. Students are using Konami's Dance Dance Revolution game as part of the state's physical education program to get active - and in some cases - shed pounds. But DDR is just part of the solution.

Using Video games to get kids excited is just one facet of the program that was discussed last week at the first ever Physical Activity Symposium, a two-day gathering held at the Embassy Suites in Charleston modeled after the National Physical Activity Plan released in May. That plan looks at several factors including transportation, land use, community design, education, business, mass media and grass roots efforts. An eight-member panel from West Virginia, Washington, D.C., California, Montana, Maine and North Carolina discussed these and other methods to increase physical activity and decrease obesity among children. Read More

The use of a videogame in an afterschool program has at least one parent seeing red.

Madison Middle School in Albuquerque, New Mexico uses an unnamed game (but which appears to be DimensionM from Tabula Digital) that teaches math amidst what one parent is calling excessive violence, reports the city’s ABC affiliate KOAT.

“We are feeding the addiction of these children to videogames,” said fist-shaking parent Marlene Perrotte, who added, “They were all excited, and they were excited because of the violence…”

“Anything we can do to meet the kids on their own ground and educate them is to our advantage,” said the school’s Gary Bodman, who called the game “just like a 21st century flash card really.”

Tabula’s website says schools that use DimensionM will see students “enjoy all the action and adventure of commercial-quality video games while practicing and reinforcing the skills they need to succeed in math.”

As part of its Changing the Game initiative, Chip-maker AMD has launched a website intended to allow teenagers create and share their own videogames.

Built by the Parsons School of Design’s PETLab, courtesy of a $77,000 grant from the AMD Foundation, Activategames.org features tutorials for making games, example games for users to play, and will feature a gallery of user-generated games. The site utilizes the publicly available Game Maker software to assist users in creating games.

When signing up with the site, users will be posed a series of challenges, which will correspond “with a current socially-conscious theme” and “may link to special global and social events.”
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The Chinese government is calling on the sizeable network of game operators within its borders for assistance with an anti-drug campaign.

Over 50 online game operators, including the likes of Shanda Entertainment and Giant Online, have said they will take part in a competition to create anti-drug public service advertisements at their own expense. The consortium was put together by Shanghai’s anti-drug commission, according to a story on China.org.cn.

The PSA’s judged to be best will eventually be shown on the city’s mobile TV network and in Internet cafes.

Of China’s 30 million online gamers, “most” were billed as being men, under the age of 35, which coincides with numbers estimating that 75 percent of all new drug users in Shanghai are people under 35. Xu Chuan, an “official” from the Shanghai anti-drug commission, noted, “Online gamers and drug users have similar demographic characteristics in most of the cases."
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A game that has players attempt to reconcile their share of the massive U.S. national debt was chosen as “Most Likely to Succeed” in a competition at last week’s seventh annual Games for Change conference.

U.O.Me (You Owe Me) is the brainchild of two “public policy experts,” Eric Heis and Nicola Moore, and allows players to “make policy decisions and personal sacrifices to pay down the debt,” which is estimated at around $201,000 per person. It’s promised that, by the time they finish the game, players will “understand what a huge challenge reducing their personal share of the national debt really is.”

Moore stated, “Our game will reach new audiences with nonpartisan policy education.” She added, “Our greatest challenge is trying to get others in our generation who stand to inherit $62 trillion of debt--to understand what that means for their future.”
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The Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA) was formed in order to provide educational programs to dependents of both U.S. military and civilian DOD workers around the world.

As part of major overhaul of the program’s 60 career and technical offerings, the 2011-2012 school year will see engineering courses offered in robotics, biotechnology, green technologies and gaming design, reports Stars and Stripes. Programs scheduled for discontinuation over the next five years include auto technology welding and lodging management.

The DODEA’s Mark Bignell stated, “We want to try and … give students an opportunity to excel in the future work force rather than get into a niche that isn’t going to have the best opportunities for them.”

While DODEA programs originally centered on vocational offerings, it now is designed to prepare students for college or the military in addition to careers.
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The college application process can be a daunting task for prospective students and their parents, but if USC’s Game Innovation Lab acquires a bit of funding, assistance could be provided in the way of an interactive game.

USC researchers have developed a card-based game and a videogame prototype of Pathfinder, which allows students to control virtual characters as they select colleges to apply to, seek out financial aid and learn other types of strategy. If the Lab can get a hold of about $1 million in funding, according to eSchoolNews, it hopes to develop a full-blown interactive game which would enable the Game Innovation Lab to reach more students, while also making it more fun to take part in.
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As part of its Changing the Game initiative, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has granted $115,000 to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA).

The funds will be used to back a digital game development program, called Club Tech: Game Tech, at four new BGCA locations in the U.S., located in Washington, D.C., Orlando, Fla., Bellevue, Wash., and Sunnyvale, Calif. By the close of 2012, the plan is to have the program expand to 14 club location in total. Club Tech: Game Tech will encourage kids to learn STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills and to “become more globally conscious citizens by developing digital games with social content.”

AMD is also donating $60,000 to install technology centers in the four new Boys & Girls Clubs listed previously.
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The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) and The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in concert with Games for Health, will launch “game jams” in six U.S. cities, including Boston, Seattle, Atlanta, Orlando, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Albany, and Fairfax, on May 21st.

The jams are designed to leverage the capabilities of game developers in support of the Apps for Healthy Kids competition, which is part of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign. Developers, artists and local youth will gather to make game prototypes in just 48 hours.

IGDA Board Chair Gordon Bellamy said, “This unique partnership provides a fun way for our members to focus their creative energies towards the goal of the Apps for Healthy Kids competition. We’re looking forward toward generating some amazing entries for the contest.” Read More

If your dream is to study how to make videogames while living in a mild climate and sampling good wine, then information from the DigiPen Institute of Technology that it will soon be opening a campus in Spain is good news indeed.

The Redmond, Washington-based school for videogame development plans to open a campus in the coastal town of Bilbao, Spain this fall. The Spanish location will offer a Bachelor of Science in Real Time Interactive Simulation and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Production Animation.

DigiPen founder Calude Comair stated, “The opening of our campus in Spain is yet another proof point of how fast this industry is growing and how important it is to provide a workforce that can drive forward innovation and creativity in the computer technologies field.”

The Spanish campus will be DigiPen’s second outside of the U.S.; it opened a Singapore branch in 2008.