Read up on the effort on Develop Mag's web site at:
http://www.developmag.com/news/30787/Tiga-pushes-for-Games-Education-Fund

"It turns out - as one could have expected - that there is quite a lot behind this unique serious game. It is actually part of a larger design initiative The Los Angeles Earthquake: Get Ready, led by Designmatters at Art Center College of Design, that has allowed them "to investigate the contributing role of design in disaster mitigation and public awareness"."

Read the piece at: http://www.core77.com/blog/education/when_designers_anticipate_the_next_big_one_11675.asp

See Aftershock at: http://www.aftershock.net/

"Another important aspect of I/ITSEC for 2008 will be emphasis on Serious Games. Over the last several years, Serious Games and virtual worlds have emerged as powerful tools for communication, collaboration, training and education in a wide variety of enterprises and organizations. A special event at I/ITSEC will focus on how multiplayer games and associated technologies are being leveraged to help train and educate the existing and future workforce. Participants will include representatives from Qwaq, Inc, Lockheed Martin, Digital Garage, BP America, North Carolina Virtual Public Schools, and PowerU to name a few. In addition, I/ITSEC will feature a "Serious Games" competition, where entries from students and researchers, small firms and large corporations are entered in a number of categories, judged and displayed in the exhibition hall. All applications, from "mods" to mobil, virtual worlds and original development will be included. "

full release at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2008_iitsec_conference/modeling_simulation/prweb1573184.htm

Choice part: "Is there money in all this?

David: We wouldn’t have written the book if there wasn’t. Consider the following: spending on corporate training exceeded $46 billion in 2006 in the U.S. alone. Advertising spending exceeded $270 billion in the U.S. alone. As much as we in the video game industry like to crow about how quickly we’ve grown and how big we’ve become, our numbers don’t hold a candle to these numbers."

Choice quote: "Our goal is not to develop games, but to study why games are effective and how they can best be used to maximize learning,” said Kinzer, who added that the institute will develop “scientifically proven game design principles that maintain the motivational and fun aspects of successful commercial games while providing knowledge about how to make games that can help teachers teach and children learn, specifically in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics."

According to the article... "Many TC faculty and students are interested in games and their potential for teaching and learning. The Computer, Communication, Technology in Education (CCTE) program offers several courses related to games, game design and learning, and Kinzer teaches a course, “Possibilities of Virtual Worlds.” The CCTE program also houses a games research lab known as EGGPLANT (Educational Games Group: Play, Language, Avatars, Narrative, and Technology), which, through an understanding of play, EGGPLANT seeks to gain knowledge of human cognition, collaboration, media effects, modern culture, creativity, improvisation and other factors within games that have implications for education. Faculty and students involved with the Games Research Lab have broad-ranging interests, and the lab has resources to study of video games, traditional board and card games, role-playing games, games for teaching and learning, "serious" games, media literacy, the psychology of games, and related topics."

To play the game please visit http://www.camfoundation.com/game.

Please visit http://www.gdconf.com for registration information.

The full Serious Games Summit schedule will be ready at the end of the month. A batch of sessions is up now and big batch will launch by end of this week.

Vision Audio Inc. has announced the release of EASe Off-Road, the first video game designed to help train children with autism to cope with sensory integration challenges. EASe Off-Road is a fun, non-violent learning experience that enables children to enjoy and more fully participate in their enhanced sound-based therapy, according to Bill Mueller, president of Vision Audio (http://www.easecd.com).

Read the full release here.

Humana and iTech Fitness Promoting Health and Wellness Through New Exergaming System
Humana Games for Health, part of Humana Inc., and iTech Fitness will jointly promote iTech's new XRKade iZone, a fully integrated and mobile exergaming system that can be purchased and easily installed in about 300 square feet of space.

Read the full release here.

Choice quote from article...

"The game’s protagonist is the polar bear—that victimized, yet cuddly symbol of global warming. Players embody the polar bear as it progresses through different climate change scenarios: Venice under water, a forest threatened by bulldozers, and an altercation with vicious oil derricks. Celebrities—political and otherwise—flutter through and interact with our hero; Leonardo DiCaprio introduces the bear to Dr. R.K. Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, while George W. Bush drills for oil in the North Pole and keeps warm by barbecuing the Kyoto protocol. Using solar panels and other renewable energy defenses, the bear narrowly succeeds in fighting off the evil forces that threaten the environment."

I tried the games which feature load times that rival early PS2 and PS3 titles. They are for better or worse unplayable. Perhaps that was part of the plan but this project got some serious funding from major arts supporters include Tribeca Institute and the Rockefeller Foundation.

You can try out any of the four games from Tin-Kin Hung by visiting http://www.gaszappers.com/. An installation of the games will be part of an exhibit at The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

Choice quote : "Sadly, the average person does not likely find any of these games fun, since, quite honestly, most just are not very good. Educational games are a vital and very much needed effort, but many developers and researchers have seemingly forgotten that a game—no matter how serious its subject matter—cannot neglect fun! And not just because games, by definition, need to be fun (in fact, “serious games” seems to be oxymoronic...something the industry cobbled together and will hopefully abandon soon)."

Lots to quibble about but interesting read. As for the knock on labels (which we sort of agree with) for those of you who don't know the Berkeley Beacon is not a University of California publication but instead one for Emerson College in Massachusetts. Apparently the student paper was founded on the corner of Berkeley and Beacon hence the name. Making things all the more confusing the paper is no longer located there but is instead on Boylston Street.

The main objective of the workshop is the exploration of "engage yourself with the heritage" concept, in order to investigate new, compelling modalities of interacting with faithful representations of the CH and propose new areas of applications for computer/based serious games. The idea is to explore how to conveniently apply leading-the-edge entertainment technologies to the promotion and wide dissemination of contents and experiences related to the CH.

Call for Papers here: http://www.vast2008.org/workshops.php