Last week's EIEF has certainly provided enough food for thought on the gamesblog this week, but games rarely provide much for educationalists to chew on. To focus on this issue, Dan Singer put an excellent panel together during last Friday's session, including Ray Maguire (Senior Vice President and Managing Director, UK, Ireland and Nordic - Sony Computer Entertainment Europe), Claus Due (Market Development Manager - Electronic Arts), Adrian Hall (Head of Multi-Media Resources - ICT in Schools DfES), Ben Sawyer (Digital Mill and the Serious Games Initiative) and Jeff Woodya (COO, Immersive Education). It addressed many important questions - in terms of cultural acceptance, government funding and policy implications - for the future of interactive entertainment.
As moderator Adam Singer said, this was the carrot juice session: not necessarily the nicest-tasting but certainly the one that did the attendees the most good. It was most encouraging to hear the Government's perspective, as well as to find out what the major players in entertainment have to say about the potential of learning from games.
Ray Games are good for you? Well, they are if you make them to be good for you.
clip about the forthcoming EyeToy Kinetic, the virtual personal trainer, created in association with Nike Motion Works. It is an innovative fitness product, which incorporated general fitness, posture, breathing, body toning, hi energy aerobics, self-defence disciplines, holistic breathing. It's a lead and follow paradigm, like most aerobics studios. Importantly, users use the EyeToy camera to check their position.
We're about fun. We know nothing about fitness but loads about games. If you want to do something like this you need to have a credible product, so we've had experts on board from Nike Research Labs to ensure everything's correct. With this product you've got some elements of a game like scoring and competition; it'll push you. It's a fun product that can do you good.
What are the gaming techniques that something like this would give me that Jane Fonda doesn't? This product gives feedback, which stationary, passive entertainment can't do. We've got all these moves which are carefully scripted so it allows for comparison. We mapped out where the body has to go to do some of these activities and we've created a way to do that.
When we think about whether or not games are good for you, we slip into the stereotype of the gamer. We need to move away from that. The contemporary idea is that he's got spots, he's lardy, he won't get a girlfriend. That's not our gamers anymore. They're 8 - 50. We've got a gamer that's in his 90's! All gamers have different requirements, but ultimately, gaming's about sociability. It's about social interaction. We've probably done more for the family, getting them together than any product in the past decade.
Claus We try to look at educational and teaching parts of games. Internally, we get the feeling that there's so much in games that isn't used today. It's clear that we know how you engage the kids by looking at how motivated they are and how active they are when playing games. If this can be combined with teaching, we've got a great product. We don't want this to be an EA thing only, but an industry thing.
There seems to be a reluctance to take commercial success with games into the classrooms, which I agree with. When I look at what happens with schools, the games that are chosen to come into the classroom are commercially successful products. These things need to be left alone on the shelf.
Adam Singer, moderator Do you see the education in its broadest sense over the next 10 years growing to be a major part of our business model?
Claus It's too early to say, but we have the strong belief that in 10 years from now a great part of all education will be part of interactivity. Pilots, doctors, business schools are working with interactivity to simulate the world. If we can be the jump-starter to help kids work actively with the power of the computer and to uncover the logic behind programmes, we've done our part.
Adam Ben, aren't we put off by the word serious?
Ben No, I'm responsible for it, I have to try and defend it! I've spent a long time trying to come up with a definition: "seriousness" is part of the game; it's not all of it. All games are serious. It can be a game developed by a developer or someone else that's uses it for another purpose than entertainment. It can be a project development team hired precisely to develop skills.
If it weren't for the commercial elements of the industry it wouldn't exist. Serious Gaming can be the use of an off the shelf game, like Civilization, repurposed in the classroom with a curriculum. That's the definition of serious games. What I've defined doesn't involve learning.
We have to see the development of games as a craft and a trade with skills that have built up over 20 years. People want learning, visualisation and communication to work like it works in games. Is this industry prepared to service that request? We want to make these two worlds come together. This is bigger than learning or K-12. I'm glad we have Sony here to focus on the health element. The Games for Health Summit that's taking place in the States in September will get tremendous media coverage because of products like Kinetic, and support for the cause from big names like Sony.
A lot of people talk about the digital divide; that divide is between those who get it and the generation that doesn't. How will we cure Hillary Clinton?
Just let it go. If we build it up and do it right, they'll come to us. She's not an ignorant woman, she understand that the future of education and learning is interactivity. We're training FDNY with interactive technology. When they start celebrating learning in games, she'll get over it despite their problems with coffee.
Adrian. I head the multi-media resources unit which covers kids between 5-16. In a year past in November, [Secretary of State for the Home Office] Charles Clarke put together a games summit. Since then, we've been looking at the potential of how the education and games can work together. Where are the gaps in games software market and, for example, the foreign language market? The answer to this question was Sonica, an interactive product designed to teach Spanish using dance mats and other interactive elements.
Sonica was developed for a fraction of the budget of traditional game content. The research is showing that games can offer catalyst for active learning, that we do require support for teachers, and they can motivate and engage disengaged pupils. The full results of this research will be announced and released at the end of September.
We keep looking at innovation in the games industry and how the two sectors can work together. First and foremost, we are working with trade bodies like ELSPA to ensure that parents are aware of the age ratings. This is a great opportunity to change the way children learn. There will need to be changes in the curriculum, but it's worth looking at to see what the future is.
The Ministry is a huge spending power in the UK. It has completely built companies. The games industry has the ability to make a sector. Will you be as aggressive to drive this forward?
Thus far, it's invested £330 million to decide what software teachers want to buy. The money has gone directly into schools through E-Learning credits. Development funds are a potentiality, and we'd like to invest in the future again.
Jeff Could this be a significant economic force? Will Immersive do a hostile takeover of EA in the future?
What does games have? Fantastic technology, excellent production values and an understanding of how to engage an audience in anything. We can do all these things with any subject. One key issue: accuracy is important. I have a worry about the commercial game off the shelf being plonked into a school. It could work, but it doesn't work enough. It's short-changing the learners because the developers need investment to bring this kind of technology into classrooms to engage students in a learning environment.
We have a product called Media Stage, which encourages complete free will in media production. Over the next few years the ability to sell commercial products to education alumni will be huge, especially if we produce quality, good for you interactive experiences. If you look at the 7,000 schools we're in at the moment, that's 4 million end-users that EA and Sony are going to want to deal with.
Adam Jeff, is there a cultural divide between education games companies and games companies developing for entertainment?
Jeff I think so, but the skill sets that are the same. It's all the same stuff, but the mindset is different. It has to be about the development of the individual, rather than pure fun.
Claus I agree to some extent. There's plenty of room for everything in the market. The benefit of having a commercial product in schools is that the investment can be solid. It's not like edutainment, where products weren't a good investment because they were about learning rather than about fun. What works for fun and good games, we're aware of, but we need to speak to academics and educationalists to develop appropriate games for learning that are both intelligent and fun.
