SERIOUS GAMES PORTAL

Serious Games creating a magical adventure

Via: The Hidden Park

Children think it’s a magical adventure. Parents think it’s a perfect afternoon in the park. We think that’s innovation!

Bulpadok is an Australian studio who has just created a mobile ARG for kids: The Hidden Park.

The Hidden Park is an adventure for parents and kids that can be played in public parks, where kids follow a GPS enabled map, answer phone calls, and collect evidence of magical creatures. Currently it's only available in specific parks (New York, Boston, Toronto, London, Munich, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Sydney, and Melbourne). A version where parents can add their own parks will be available from next month.

The Hidden Park is also a whole new form of outdoor gaming on your mobile phone, currently available for iPhone users on Apple’s App Store (click here to download). The game uses all the iPhone’s built-in features to allow kids to interact with the park in ways that were previously impossible. It’s an amazing and engaging experience that promotes imagination, fitness and problem solving.

How it Works

The application uses the iPhone features to lead children into a fantasy world of trolls, fairies and tree genies - right in their local park.

First, download the app from Apple’s App Store. The adventure unfolds from there…

The children navigate their way through the park by following a map that lets them know where the magical creatures live. Of course, Trutton’s map is magical – as they move past landmarks in the park the map tells them where to go next.

The children must solve puzzles and riddles on their way to the next destination. Clues to the answers can be found on the signposts in the park.

Following Trutton’s directions, the children take photos of various landmarks. As if by magic, Trutton’s fantastical friends appear in the photos – sometimes right next to the children!

The photos are stored in a gallery, so at the end of the day the children have an album of their adventure. It’s an amazing adventure, an amazing app, and the world just got that little bit more magic…

Maximizing the capabilities of the iPhone, The Hidden Park uses all its in-built features, pushing it to the limit to deliver a valuable user experience.

Assisted Global Positioning System (A-GPS)

By using the iPhone’s speedy A-GPS feature, The Hidden Park is able to accurately pinpoint each player’s movements within the park and plot this against the interactive map that forms the heart of the game. Through Location Based Services (LBS) technology, the game triggers particular animations and tasks as the user reaches key waypoints along their journey.

Digital Camera

The inbuilt digital camera plays a key role in The Hidden Park by allowing the player to document their journey in a highly interactive fashion – refer to Screen Grabs section. Powered by 2.0 megapixels of resolution, the inbuilt camera is more than sufficient for producing sharp photographic results at print quality.

Accelerometer

The Accelerometer is an inbuilt feature that allows the iPhone’s display to respond accordingly to any physical motion of the handset. In the case of The Hidden Park, this feature has been used interactively for when photos are taken of the player during the game - refer to Screen Grabs section. After a photo is taken, you shake the iPhone to activate the Accelerometer, which scatters the mystical characters over the top of the image. The phone can be shaken numerous times to randomly scatter the characters, until the player is happy with the configuration.

Alternate Reality Gaming (ARGs)

Alternate Reality Gaming is taking the gaming experience to an entirely new level. Players are required to interact with the real world around them instead of a simulated digital playing arena. The Hidden Park has taken the emerging genre of Alternative Reality Gaming and brought it to mainstream family entertainment. As the real world forms the platform for the game, any number of multimedia vehicles can be used - phones, email, Internet etc. – to drive the user experience. For the creators of The Hidden Park, the iPhone provided a perfect vehicle for ARGs. The Hidden Park is one of the first iPhone games to capitalize on this opportunity.

Geocaching

Geocaching is a type of treasure-hunt in which the participants use GPS receivers or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called ‘geocaches’ or ‘caches’). Since May 2000 a small group of enthusiasts has grown into a sprawling community supporting over 823,000 geocaches placed in over 100 countries on all seven continents, including Antarctica.

About Bulpadok

Bulpadok is a mobile content studio founded by James Kane in November, 2008. The studio has just released its first iPhone App, The Hidden Park. The app sits somewhere between geocaching and ARGs.

Serious Games challenging us to play a better education

Via: NihongoUp – Learning Japanese the Fun Way

NihongoUp is a Japanese reviewing tool for foreign students and native speakers alike developed by Philip Seyfi.

I’ve just installed the free trial version of the AIR application from http://nihongoup.com/ and found out it has a few educational mini-games to help improve your typing speed on a Japanese keyboard, sentence structure and vocabulary.

When you start up the application, you have four choices: Katakana, Hiragana, Kanji, and Particles – all this packaged in NihongoUp learning game, which aims at keeping you motivated during the review of this most demanding language.

Hiragana and Katakana:

In this game, balloons with different Hiragana (or Katakana) come down: you have to type in the falling syllables before they reach the bottom of the screen.

Kanji:

In the kanji game, you get a sentence at the bottom with a highlighted section. You have to click on the balloon containing the kanji that can be correctly placed in the proposed sentence to move on to the next one.

The game is now available for JLPT 3 & 4 levels, but according to the website JLPT 2 and JLPT 1 sentence lists for the Kanji exercises are coming soon.

Particles:

In the particles game, you get a sentence with a missing particle, and then four choices. You have to choose the particle than can be placed into the sentence.

Overall Impressions from Japanese Speakers

“Nihongoup does some neat things for Japanese language practice. There’s some room for improvement, which is fine because it’s an early product. t’s kind of one of those things where it’s really good that it’s simple, but has room for a little more (I think?). I do wish the sentences were easier to read (more kanji, please!), and I’d also like to see more settings for different difficulty levels within each section (faster speeds, etc).”

Find more at NihongoUp Blog

xaitment’s AI technology integrated into Trinigy’s Vision Engine

PRESS RELEASE

xaitment integrates xaitEngine into Vision Engine
Trinigy’s Vision Game Engine now contains multi-platform support for xaitment’s AI solution.

Saarbrücken, Germany – May 28, 2009 - xaitment GmbH, one of the leading developers and service providers of artificial intelligence for the games and simulation industries, and Trinigy, a leading provider of 3D game engines with offices in Germany and Austin, TX, announced today that xaitment’s AI technology – the xaitEngine – is now integrated into Trinigy’s Vision Engine.

Trinigy’s Vision Engine is one of the world most advanced and widely-used game engines for PC and console games. Numerous teams across four continents are using the Vision Engine to create games in a range of genres.

“Game studios around the world have chosen the Vision Engine for its ability to create games of the highest standard,” said Dr. Andreas Gerber, Group CEO of xaitment. “We are very excited about the partnership with Trinigy and to become part of that success story. More and more game developers are using external solutions for the implementation of path finding, behavior and especially for game logic and game AI. The integration of our AI products into the Vision Engine is part of our strategy to offer the market an all-inclusive AI solution and marks another important step for our clients and company.”

The xaitEngine is designed from the ground up to support the needs of game designers, artists and programmers alike, and to integrate seamlessly into game pipelines and applications. Its modular design gives teams the choice to integrate all the AI features they need or just the AI functionality they want for their specific title. Due to the intuitive, graphical interface of xaitment’s application, even the most advanced NPC (non-player character) behaviors can be integrated without one line of code. These unique features simplify the whole workflow of a game production and allow development teams to create more immersive games faster and more cost-effectively.

“We are pleased about the integration of xaitment,” adds Felix Roeken, General Manager of Trinigy. “We have received a lot of requests for the xaitEngine. I’m glad that we can now offer our clients a solid multi-platform connection which allows them to use the two technologies immediately.”

The two solutions are available separately. Large and small developers can purchase the entire xaitEngine or any of its stand-alone modules for demo purposes or full development projects.

About xaitment GmbH

A spin-off of the world-renowned German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), xaitment was founded in 2004 with the mission to create lifelike AI for games and simulations. Their mission led to the development of the xaitEngine, a highly customizable and highly modular multi-agent system that enables bots to learn from their mistakes, coordinate activities, compete with each other and achieve their goals with uncanny realism. For more information about xaitment and the xaitEngine, visit www.xaitment.com.

About Trinigy

Trinigy is an independent company focusing on the development of advanced 3D graphics technology with offices in Germany and Austin, TX (USA). In the field of 3D game engines, Trinigy is one of the world's leading companies. Trinigy’s Vision Engine 7 is one of the world’s most advanced technologies for AAA to online distributed productions. Currently in use in 100+ commercial game productions all over the world, by well-known companies such as Ubisoft, Firefly, Take 2, Neowiz, Dreamcatcher, and others, the Vision Engine has proven its versatility for use in a multitude of game genres, including real-time strategy, racing, first person shooters, role-playing games and massively multiplayer online (MMO) games. Vision Engine 7 is available and optimized for PC (DX9, DX10), Xbox360™, PLAYSTATION®3, Nintendo Wii™, XBLA™, PSN™ and WiiWare™. For more information about the Trinigy Vision Engine, please visit: www.trinigy.net.

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XAITMENT Grows Into North American Market
Gas Powered Games Endorses xaitment Lifelike AI
XAITMENT Turns Your Concept Into Intelligent Games
XAITMENT Incorporates Lifelike AI Into GIANTS Upcoming Serious Game
XAITMENT BrainPack: A Step Forward For Lifelike AI In Serious Games
XAITMENT Brings Emotional Intelligence To Serious Games
Serious Gaming to Become a Successful Farmer

Serious Gaming to understand banking sector

Via: IndustryMasters – Bank Rush – The Bank Business Simulation

The IndustryMasters Team announced early June that their new business simulation game Bank Rush has become available on-line.

Developed by Tycoon Systems, Bank Rush is a serious game for people who want to better understand the banking sector. This very realistic banking game puts players in the role of the CEO of a major retail bank, to compete against each other for market leadership and shareholder value.

Background Scenario

The financial crisis began in 2007 with the loss of confidence by investors in the value of securitized mortgages in the United States.

In September 2008, the crisis deepened! Stock markets worldwide crashed and entered a period of high volatility, and a considerable number of banks, mortgage lenders and insurance companies failed in the following months.

In February 2009 U.S. President Barack Obama signed the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law.

The Federal Reserve announced that it will purchase $1.15 trillion in US Assets to prop up liquidity and lending to spur economic growth.

Now it's your mission to manage the Bank through the crisis! You will adjust your interest rates for loans and deposits, adjust the marketing budgets and invest into new market segments. To expand your business you can borrow fresh money from the Central Bank at low interest rates! But caution: there might still be some surprises in the balance sheet and loan defaults may destroy your profits.

Competitive Environment

The Bank is operating in direct competition with 4 other banks. Your task, as the new CEO, is to intensify the competition and grow your bank in a sustainable way.

Your Bank operates in the retail sector and provides services for private individuals such as Current Accounts, Saving Accounts, Credit Cards and long term Loans & Mortgages.

You compete against 4 virtual competitors that have different products and strategies. The US Accounts Bank and the UK Bank are the strongest competitors and try to outgrow each other. Two other competitors, the Global Trust bank and the Euro Bank Group are heavily hit by the financial crisis.

By operating checking accounts and long term deposits you get capital into the bank that you can lend out to other customers as loans.

It is essential that you try to lend out loans as expensive as possible (high interest rate) while refinancing the money as cheap as possible (low interest rate) to get the best result.

Setting the Interest Rates

Whenever the Central Bank changes the interest rates (Fed Rate), the whole market moves with it. To help you making the right settings, you will get warning messages if your interest rates deviate strongly from the market's average. In any case you should frequently check your competitors’ rates and make sure your rates fit the market.

Expansion & Marketing

To grow your interest income you need to give out more loans to new and existing clients.

And for a high profitability you need to make sure that the workload of your managers reaches close to 100%.

To raise the workload you can get new customers by investing more into marketing. Once the workload is high, you can lower the marketing budgets to a sustainable level.

If you expand your current products or invest into a new one, the workload start low and you need to invest substantially into marketing to get enough new customers to bring up workload and profits.

Sources of Funding

Treasury is the 'heart' of your Bank where the overall funding and cash allocations are made and the bank balance sheet gets shaped.

Ideally, funds lent to clients should balance with funds borrowed from clients. In practice, this is not likely to happen and there are two additional sources of funds: the Central Bank and the Interbanking Market.

The Economy shows 4 important indicators on a monthly base, looking 12 month back: the Change of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product), the annual Inflation Rate, the Jobless Rate and the Fed Rate. Until March 2009 the macro-economic scenario is modeled with real US economy data.The Fed Rate has a direct impact on the re-financing cost of the Banks and should be watched closely. At start of the simulation (January 2008) the Fed Rate gets lowered to 3% and continues to move downwards until it reaches the all time low of 0.25% in December 2008.

Sign-up for a free trial account and start your career as a bank director.

About Tycoon Systems

Tycoon Systems is a software company focusing on the development and marketing of business education technology.

15 years ago, their founder Thomas Lehnert has developed his first business simulation CABS, with the vision of providing an experience-based learning environment for business education. From this vision, Thomas and his team have created IndustryPlayer and IndustryMasters, used by many thousands of business students across the globe.

Both IndustryPlayer and IndustryMasters are based on an interactive real-time multi-player technology. Like in the real economy, the participants are competing against each other in industries which evolve dynamically, depending on the decisions of all players. In real-time, the participant see the impact of their decisions to the bottom line.

Previous posts:

Serious Games: You As The Boss Of A Global Business

Serious Games: You As The Boss Of A Global Business - Update

Serious Games for dentists-to-be

Following my prior posting Dental Serious Games with 3D Touch, here is another serious game giving dentists-to-be practice time on virtual teeth.

Research shows that healthcare providers who practice clinical skills via simulation have better patient outcomes than those who don't. The Virtual Dental Implant Training Simulation is designed to help students in diagnostics, decision making and treatment protocols.

The implant simulation game uses multiple patients and clinical scenarios that can be randomly selected, letting students interact with virtual patients by asking about their medical history, examining them and arriving at a diagnosis. Like humans, the virtual patients have different personalities, and students must tailor treatment based on the mental, physical and emotional needs of the individual.

If the virtual patient is a candidate for implant therapy, the simulation then ventures into a virtual clinical treatment area, where students decide the type, location and orientation of the implants, type and location of anesthesia and tools for surgery.

Read more…

Via: POPSCI.com

Virtual-Reality Dental Training Is as Gory as You'd Expect
by Laura Silver

Video games may be good for your dental health. Not for the jaw-clenching or tooth-grinding action -- discuss these conditions with a professional if they persist in conjunction with gaming -- but because dentists will soon have access to virtual mouths before they get their hands on your chompers.

The Virtual Dental Implant Training (VDIT) Simulation is now in beta testing, and set for rollout next fall, when it will reach about 15,000 dental students in 25 universities around the globe that partner with Nobel Biocare of Sweden, the project's funder. Developed by Maryland-based game developer BreakAway in concert with the Medical College of Georgia, VDIT uses entertainment technology to simulate real-world scenarios. Dr. Roman Cibirka, Vice President for Instruction and Enrollment Management Associate Provost for Academic Affairs, put the wheels in motion 18 months ago, after he attended a Games for Health conference.

This year he presented VDIT at the gathering in Boston.

The digital interface lets dental students put classroom lessons into action and build on the training they've done with medical mannequins. Cibirka said increased opportunities to exercise hands-on-mouth skills lead to better outcomes, on both sides of the dental chair. Speaking from Breakaway's high-security offices (the company has top-level security clearance because of its contracts with the military), producer Isaac Jeppsen said he situated the action in the dental office -- and in the patient's mouth -- to make it less complicated for first-time gamers. "You don't need to navigate down the hall and move into an office, you start the game where you need to be," said Jeppse: looking at a patient ensconced in a dental chair. He created a mouth, brought drills to life and input a series of questions that allow players to assess their patients' conditions before setting drills in motion.

Dentists-in-training start each round of the simulation game with a question-and-answer intake session to figure out if the person in the chair is well suited for an implant. Neglecting to ask a pixelated patient what brought her to the dentist will cause a player to fail.

"There's a very solid body of evidence that there are basically four patient profiles," said Cibirka. Those four profiles were starting points for the patients who appear in VDIT: two women and two men of different ages, backgrounds, personalities and implant considerations. A prosthodontist -- specializing in bridges, crowns, implants, and dentures -- by training, Cibirka is familiar with the pitfalls that can trip up both new dentists and experienced practitioners (the latter have also exhibited an interest in the simulation). He worked with Jeppsen and his team to build complexity into the virtual patients: each one appears in two to four scenarios that showcase different clinical problems and states of mind.

Before taking on the dental simulation game, Jeppson worked on Command and Conquer, a futuristic battle betweens humans and aliens. It's the same type of work, he said, just for a different audience. Jeppsen likens the dental simulation to choose-your-own-adventure games, "not totally cutting edge, but close enough that you get a feel for the person that you're interviewing."

Of course, there's a technical component to the work. VDIT players choose the sequence of the drills for the implant procedure and then watch it happen according to their instructions. Using the wrong drill in the incorrect order will make the virtual gums explode in blood.

Have a taste of it: Clip 1 and Clip 2

Jeppsen wants more of that in the next iteration. Not for the gore factor, but to illustrate margins of error. "You could break the jaw if you over-torque it," said Jeppsen, "but it's not necessarily shown in the game."

Which goes back to a credo he picked up from Cibirka: "It's not the carpentry we're trying to teach, it's the decision-making process."

Serious Games for collaborative training

Via: Forterra Systems

PRESS RELEASE

SELEX SYSTEMS INTEGRATION LOOKS TO EXPAND INNOVATIVE TRAINING SOLUTIONS USING VIRTUAL WORLD TECHNOLOGY FROM FORTERRA SYSTEMS AND AMBIENT PERFORMANCE

SAN MATEO, Calif. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — Ambient Performance, the European distributor and service provider for Forterra Systems, has today announced that The Finmeccanica Company, SELEX Systems Integration will expanded its use of Forterra’s On-Line Interactive Virtual Environment (OLIVE™) virtual world platform to provide innovative training solutions for a broad range of customers.

SELEX Systems Integration is a Prime Contracting and Systems Integration business that now incorporates the long-established training capability of VEGA, VEGA Deutschland and VEGA France. The company plans to explore the many potential applications of emerging distributed virtual world technologies to help transform training for armed forces being rapidly deployed across multiple theatres of operation.

“We are working with Ambient Performance and the Forterra Systems OLIVE virtual world platform to support the increased requirement for collaborative training across distributed locations.” said Ian Govier, SELEX Systems Integration’s Head of Future Solutions.

“OLIVE provides us with a secure and reliable tool that enables us to rapidly prototype new training solutions that can be provided to distributed users.

“We’re working to develop Experiential Learning Solutions by integrating existing simulations with which the users can interact with each other in an immersive environment. We’re also reusing our own models and terrain to rapidly update a specific training environment to represent the contemporary operating environment. We’re also using the OLIVE platform as a collaboration environment to work across SELEX sites, providing secure virtual meetings across our secure network.”

“SELEX Systems Integration aims to leverage the most effective and innovative technologies available to ensure our training solutions deliver the specific training requirements for our clients. Our work with Ambient, Forterra and the OLIVE virtual world platform shows our continued dedication to this commitment.”

Ron Edwards, Ambient Performance CEO commented, "We're excited to support SELEX System Integration's further progress with OLIVE to integrate their existing valuable simulation technologies, models, terrain and experimentation into the OLIVE platform to best meet their client needs. They're a great team to work with given their highly capable personnel — they're the fastest we've seen in terms of developing fully-operational solutions with OLIVE."

About SELEX Systems Integration

SELEX Systems Integration is a Prime Contracting and Systems Integration business that now incorporates the long-established training capability of VEGA, VEGA Deutschland and VEGA France.

Operating as SELEX Systems Integration outside of Germany and France, our dedicated Training Solutions team represents nearly two decades’ experience defining, developing, and managing through-life military training solutions to improve organizational performance.

SELEX Systems Integration brings together best-of-breed capability offered by independent commercial partners with the latest technological developments from across the Finmeccanica group, enabling clients to transform their training and achieve their operational objectives.

About Forterra Systems

Forterra Systems is a leader in providing enterprise grade virtual world technology for the corporate, healthcare, government, education, and entertainment industries. Forterra's software and services enable organizations to collaborate, train, rehearse, and hold events using existing media technologies integrated into a compelling 3D virtual world. Using the OLIVE platform and industry standard PC hardware, customers can rapidly generate realistic, collaborative, 3D Internet solutions that scale from small team applications to large scale simulated environments supporting many thousands of concurrent users for public and private use cases.

About Ambient Performance

Ambient Performance specializes in enterprise virtual world applications with deep experience implementing and supporting emerging online training and collaboration tools. Ambient is the European distributor and service provider for Forterra Systems OLIVE virtual world platform with clients in the Government, Corporate and Higher Education sectors.

Serious Games address hot-button social issues

Via: Zakelro!

Participatory Storytelling is the intersection of story, play, and community.

Participatory storytelling is a way of looking at storytelling that acknowledges the importance of play and community. It is a critical framework for analyzing storytelling media, from traditional storytelling to video games, with an eye on its ability to include the audience in the storytelling process. It is also a goal of story as conversation, where a storyteller and her community play together in the creation of story.

Participatory storytelling is also the guiding principle of Zakelro Story Studio.

The roots of Zakelro's participatory storytelling theory can be found in the whitepaper, Games and Storytelling, by Corvus Elrod. Continued thoughts on the topic can be found on Corvus’ blog, Man Bytes Blog.

Zakelro! is a creative collaboration of Rachel Zakariasen and Corvus Elrod, two wandering storytellers whose paths had the good fortune to meet in many wild and wonderful ways.

Their passion is in exploring the idea of story through as many avenues as possible, whether it be through traditional storytelling, experimental theater, animation, game design, fiber arts, or exciting combinations of these and other creative pursuits.

While story is a defining element of human existence, most people wander through their modern lives largely unaware that every single hour of every single day they are creating stories.

Zakelro! exists to get stories off the shelves and more profoundly into our lives. They understand that story has the power to help us make sense of the universe and understand our place in the world.

They host a monthly Round Table where Bloggers are invited to contribute on a central topic.

Last month's topic was a challenge to design a game that addressed a hot-button social issue such as discrimination, abuse, genocide, others. They had a number of entries which might be of interest to those who appreciate the art of storytelling.

Here is a sample:

• Apr. 06 - Deirdra Kiai Productions: Privilege, Racism, and One Person’s Story. Deirdra grapples with privilege and explores how the games she’s already designed deal with her own experiences with racism.
• Apr. 11 - The Autumnal City: The Guitar in the Corner Travis explores schizophrenia through a game designed to evoke a deep emotional response.
• Apr. 12 - And thus Spoke Pi: I gotta game for you… Adam explores politics and betrayal in his usual inflammatory style. Apr. 20 - Graduate School Gamer: The Wire. Murry takes on the war on drugs.
• Apr. 21 - Writing the Game: Taking Games Seriously, Making Games Seriously. Keira takes a look at class privilege with a RPG.
  Apr. 20 - Discount Thoughts: Garden of Eden. Michael takes on ecological sustainability.
• Apr. 20 - TTNN: Autism Simulator. As the title suggests, David puts us in the role of a person suffering from autism.
• Apr. 22 - Groping the Elephant: No Way Out. Justin takes a look at domestic abuse.
• Apr. 30 - The Game Critique: Torture. Eric adds another perspective on torture.

Corvus Elrod is a storyteller and game designer who is working on bringing his 16 years experience into the digital realm.

Technorati Tags: serious games, seriousgames, future-making serious games, activism games

Serious Games challenging us to improve health

Via: SharpBrains - Cognitive Health Track at Games for Health Conference

Alvaro Fernandez, SharpBrains co-founder and CEO, reports at his blog that he and Ben Sawyer have just agreed to create a new Cognitive Health track -Powered by SharpBrains- at the 5th Annual Games for Health Conference

Alvaro Fernandez will host the 11-session track, covering a variety of cognitive health and brain fitness topics and an overview of SharpBrains' upcoming report The State of the Brain Fitness Software Market 2009.

When and where: June 11-12th at the Hyatt Harborside Hotel in Boston, MA.

Context: The Games for Health Conference is produced by The Serious Games Initiative and supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The conference brings together researchers, medical professionals, decision-makers at healthcare and insurance providers, innovators and game developers.

I have attended the conference last year in Baltimore and was also impressed by the high caliber of both speakers and the audience.

Participation Options

1) Attend: The current price is $379, with a 15% discount if you use code "sharp09" (without quotation) when you register here. Special price for students is $200.

Please note that the Cognitive Health track is being scheduled now - the detailed agenda shall be announced during the month of May.

2) Speak: They are looking for innovators, researchers and decision-makers who would like to speak about their ongoing projects related to the use of games and other computer-based technologies for cognitive health.

If you are interested, please forward a couple of paragraphs summarizing a) your project, bio and organization, b) what key lessons learned and impressions you would share if given 20 minutes to http://www.sharpbrains.com/about-us/contact-us/, by May 1st.

3) Advertise/ Sponsor/ Exhibit: To inquire about options, please contact Beth Bryant, one of the conference organizers, at bbryant at dmill.com

SharpBrains is collaborating with Games for Health Conference to expand the Cognitive Health dialogue!

Serious Games creating intelligent shared spaces

SHASPA Application for Home Energy

Via: Serious Games Institute - Shaspa Shared Spaces Home Energy

LAUNCH AT SERIOUS GAMES INSTITUTE
COVENTRY UNIVERSITY TECHNOLOGY PARK
APRIL 15TH
14:00 – 17:30

SHASPA SHARED SPACES HOME ENERGY will be launched at the Serious Games Institute on Coventry Technology Park. This event will unveil and demonstrate how SHASPA SHARED SPACES will bring the power of Web 3.0 to the challenge of sustainable energy consumption.

The SHASPA SHARED SPACES HOME ENERGY kits provide unprecedented visualization and control of domestic energy usage that is anticipated to significantly reduce energy consumption in both existing and new properties. These kits will include a revolutionary social energy meter and tools and wizards that not only make managing your energy consumption highly engaging and interactive, but will also provide access to your energy usage and devices remotely via mobile phone or the Internet.

In a recent report by the European Commission entitled “Commission pushes ICT usage for a greener Europe” (ref IP/09/393) it is stated :-

“As part of its effort to combat climate change and drive economic recovery, the European Commission today called on Member States and industry to use information and communications technologies (ICT) to improve energy efficiency. These technologies are expected to reduce total carbon emissions in Europe by up to 15% by 2020. ICT can not only improve monitoring and management of energy use in factories, offices and in public spaces but above all help make people more aware of how they use energy. With smart metering in their homes, for example, consumers have been found to reduce their energy consumption by as much as 10%.”

The launch of SHASPA SHARED SPACES HOME ENERGY kits will introduce the next generation of smart metering with integrated Web 3.0 technologies aimed at producing maximum energy savings and significantly reducing carbon footprints.

About Shaspa

Via: CyberTech News - Mix Virtual And Real With Shaspa

SHASPA is a Web 3.0 technology platform and infrastructure that blends emerging technologies such as wireless sensors, social networks, virtual worlds and electronic games to create applications which integrate, visualize, monitor and manage the physical and virtual environment.

SHASPA has been devised by a partnership between Swiss entrepreneur Oliver Goh and the Serious Games Institute at Coventry University.

Today’s technologies in 3D immersive environments enable us to better visualize and understand the world around us and the SHASPA platform provides creative developers, working on the integration of physical and virtual worlds, new applications which foster better energy management, greater understanding of physical processes and the creation of intelligent shared spaces capable of delivering high value services to individuals working in those spaces.

SHASPA is an intelligent shared space. Intelligent shared spaces are locations (physical or virtual) which deliver a set of highly personalized services to and build / manage relationships between entities (individuals, devices, systems, agents or combinations of these) active in those locations. Intelligent shared spaces act as hubs to social and business networks and support their sustainable development both environmentally and commercially.

The installation means that the home as a physical place will get a virtual counterpart. The virtual home should not be mixed with mirror reality systems, where the virtual space is meant to be an exact copy of the real space.

The aim of the installation is to have a SHASPA powered home that will be:

• connected with other SHASPA homes (using the OpenSim grid mode - I can pay a virtual visit to my friend’s home)
• controlled and observed from the virtual world, or from my mobile phone (how much use this is depends on how well the house is sensored)
• sending a twitter feed on important events. (temperature dropped below recommended minimum, etc)

SHASPA is not limited to home use. The target group contains also enterprises, offices and basically any real estate.

Over the coming months, SHASPA will be recruiting and showcasing developers from across the globe. To be part of the SHASPA initiative, please contact info@shaspa.com.

Technorati Tags: serious games, seriousgames, future-making serious games, ecology games

Toyota Augments its Mini iQ

Via: Games Alfresco

Augmented reality (AR) allows virtual 3D information to be superimposed seamlessly into the real environment in real-time.

Toyota has used augmented reality technology to create a 3D interactive experience of the new iQ car. Toyota iQ is a radical new small car and augmented reality technology allows you to interact with the car to discover its agility and interior space.

Via 90 percent of everything

Toyota's created a 3D interactive version of iQ for the Toyota iQ augmented reality. If you've got a webcam, you can download the application and use it to explore the car.

An Augmented Reality Demo You Can Try At Home

If you've got a webcam, you can download the application and use it to explore the car. To experience iQ Reality you need at least 1GB of spare RAM, a good graphics card and a webcam. PCs must be running Windows 2000, XP or Vista; Macs should be on OSX 10.4. Computers set up for gaming are ideal.

When you are ready to start downloading, click the correct link (PC or Mac) and print out iQ cards here.

Even if you don't have a webcam it's worth taking a look at the demo below.

Although the wow factor of this demo will wear off after a few minutes, it’s worth bearing in mind the potential applications of this technology.

IPhone As A New Vehicle for Branding

Via: SlideShare - Branded iPhone Apps - The Next Generation Of Immersive Mobile Branding

Marta Kagan, social media evangelist and online marketing pro, has recently uploaded a useful SlideShare presentation on branded applications for the iPhone. Besides containing most interesting iPhone young user demographics, the presentation contextualizes the re. apps as the next generation of immersive mobile branding.

According to the presentation, iPhone users have higher than average discretionary income and iPhone apps enjoy a higher than average response rate. Put all that together and branded apps may be the killer app of all time.

Known online as the “Bonafide Marketing Genius”, Marta Z. Kagan is a strategic marketing and communications professional with a passion for social media and extensive experience using the Internet to engage consumers and create memorable brands.

Currently Marta is working on ensuring that Viximo (another extremely good-looking Web 2.0 startup based in Cambridge, MA.) dominates the emerging Virtual Goods space.

Enjoy the presentation: