SERIOUS GAMES EXPERTS

XPLingo - Play Your Language is a start-up in its very early stage founded by Ingo Ehrle and Jose Freitas.  In early 2014, Ingo Ehrle, a business developer who had worked for six years in Barcelona building up a subsidiary for a German software company, was looking for a technical co-founder to start a business in language learning. Passionate about languages, Ingo met Jose Freitas who was jumping to a new life from Brazil to Germany to open an indie game company. At that point, they spent a lot of time talking about language learning and adventure games, realizing that they shared the same beliefs. In spring 2014, Jose and Ingo joined forces to work on the XPLingo - Play Your Language project, targeting people who learn a foreign language for passion – people who fall in love with a country as they travel there for the very first time, or want to connect with locals, or this language just sounds so damn good to them that they want to speak it. Believing in the power

Editors Prof.Minhua Ma, Art, Design and Architecture, University of Huddersfield, UK ; Dr. Andreas Oikonomou, School of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University, UK and Prof. Lakhmi Jain, University of South Australia, School of Engineering, Australia, have issued this week a “Call for Chapters” for the second volume of Serious Games and Edutainment Applications published in 2011. Following the success of the first volume, which has been heavily downloaded (over 28k downloads), the second volume offers an insightful introduction to the recent development and applications of video games technologies including virtual and augmented reality in educational settings, with cutting edge academic research and industry updates which will inform readers current and future advances in the area. This book is suitable for researchers, postgraduate students, educators who are interested in using "Serious Games" for training and educational purposes, and software

Schell Games was the deserved recipient of Gold Medal honors for two of its games at the   2015 International Serious Play Awards , held this week. Both   The World of Lexica   and   Water Bears   were recognized for their high quality of engagement and measurable learning opportunities. Earlier this year, Schell Games  was    awarded a $1 million, two-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education to change the way molecular chemistry is taught in schools. This award, from the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), was one of only eight given for Phase II projects. Phase II projects support further research and development of prototypes of education technology products that were funded by 2014 ED/IES SBIR Phase I awards. In the Phase II project, the teams shall complete the development of the product, and conduct a pilot study in schools to demonstrate the usability and feasibility, fidelity of implementation, and t

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Serious Games Showcase & Challenge Game submissions for the 2015 Serious Games Showcase &Challenge   will open August 3 through September 20 and the SGS&C Official Rules 2015 have been posted. There have been a few changes, so check them out at  http://sgschallenge.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/SGSC-Official-Rules-JUL2019.pdf . Finalists will be notified on October 15 and shall be prepared to attend the I/ITSEC conference to be held November 30-December 3, 2015. All finalists are provided free entry to the conference as well as space in the SGS&C booth to demonstrate their game to a worldwide training, simulation and education audience in Orlando, Florida. All award winners are announced on the final day of the conference, December 3, and invited to the I/ITSEC Awards Reception. There are 7 awards to be reaped, as you may find below. Development Categories There are three development categorie

Gamelearn   is a world leader in Corporate Serious Games to develop soft skills. According to the company, leadership, personal productivity & time management, negotiation & conflict resolution, and communication are among the most valued skills by employers. Gamelearn  defines soft skills as the ability to adapt to change and believes that these skills are not easy to learn: you can only acquire them through trial and error. The company has developed Serious Games & Sims in order to help develop soft skills that otherwise could not be acquired. Founded in 2008,  Gamelearn  originated from a conventional classroom-based training company that has evolved to a game-based learning approach, each product comprising three core components: the content of a complete soft skills training course; an online simulator, requiring the skill being learned to be practiced and a Serious Game for total user engagement. Ibrahim Jabary is  Gamelearn  co-founder and creator of i

Filament Games   has won a silver medal at the   2015 International Serious Play Awards   for its Backyard Engineers Serious Game.  Backyard Engineers  is an online game that helps players think like engineers as they design their own homemade catapults: p layers experiment with physics concepts and manipulate several catapult components -- such as gear ratios, arm lengths, and building materials -- in their quest to design the ultimate water balloon launcher. It's easy enough to jump in, with helpful tutorials and extra instructional text throughout. The game utilizes a mostly visual interface to help players make and iterate their catapults, thus eliminating the need of “numerical hoops” to play the game. By customizing different mechanical elements of the catapult, students can manipulate movement, accuracy, range, and damage to drench even the most evasive of targets. Each level of the game is a unique puzzle that challenges players to experiment with engineering solut

Toolwire has won two silver medals at the 2015 International Serious Play Awards for its Virtual Medical Internship and Writing Game Series products.  Providing a “virtual internship” experience at a fictional television news station, the Toolwire Writing Game Series challenges students to review, practice, and demonstrate college level writing skills in authentic workplace scenarios. Toolwire Writing Games immerse students in photo-realistic settings with interactive video-characters and hands-on simulations that leverage on a seamlessly integrated “natural assessment” infrastructure. Along the way, students make decisions, study with experts, play learning games, receive dynamic remediation, and attain contextual relevance for English Composition in the real world. The series consists of 17 writing games that enable students to apply knowledge related to key writing objectives (grammar, thesis statements, paragraph construction, revising & editing, and research

                    CROSS-POSTING FROM  SERIOUS GAME MARKET BLOG The Serious Games Association disclosed Sunday evening the winners of the 2015 International Serious Play Awards competition. The program recognizes outstanding examples of titles that deliver a high quality of engagement and measurable learning opportunities. More than 25 studios, publishers, companies and academic student groups addressing the growth of Serious Games have won gold, silver and bronze honors. Here they are: Gold Medal Winners: ·          Water Bears , Schell Games (Education K-12, Systems Thinking) – object of my prior post   Schell Games Providing Hands-on Experience With Systems Thinking Concepts ·          The World of Lexica , Amplify and Schell Games (Education K-12, Literacy) – object of my prior post Serious Games Take ELA Learning To New Heights ·          Twelve a Dozen , Bossa Studios and Amplify (Education K-12, Math) - object of my prior post Amplify Disrupting Serious

USC Standard Patient is a new University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies research project. It seeks to improve clinic-based medical encounter simulation with the goal to create engaging Virtual Standardized Patient (VSP) encounters, enable objective and meaningful assessment of learner interview performance and mature physician interviewing & diagnostic skills. VSPs are substantially different in design and use from what is typically referred to as Virtual Patients. VSPs, which are based on SimCoach virtual human technology, c onverse in natural English, understand what you tell them and can express themselves non-verbally through facial expressions and gestures . The system can create patients with a range of personalities including average, sullen, loquacious, uncertain, reserved and neurotic. The long term vision for the USC Standard Patient is to create the most functional and natural virtual standardized patients in history, while establ