Serious Games - Awakenings '07

On Friday the 28th of October I went the Awakenings '07 Conference in Derry with class mates and lecturer Bryan Duggan. The event was an overall success and a worthwhile trip up north. Some of the leading professional in the Serious games industry from across UK were in attendance and speaking on all aspects of Serious Games and the industry as a whole.

The first speaker was Paul Fullwood, who is currently developing games that teach children the school curriculum in a fun and engaging way. This allows children to continue learning the curriculum while they are at home, on holidays etc. This will increase the amount of time children have to learn the curriculum, instead of just learning it in class rooms where there is endless distraction. Paul firstly recognised the title "Serious Games" is not a good one, and should be change to "Fun Games" or just "Games". If educational games are not fun and engaging no one will play them and they would be a waste of time to develop.

The second speaker was a man called Roo Reynolds from IBM, I could not make a connection from what he discussed to the serious games industry. He was talking about Meta worlds, application such a Second Life. He seemed to promote the idea of these applications as the evolution of the Internet, bringing the Internet from 2D to 3D. It was interesting all the same. I still won't be using second life anytime soon.

The third speaker was Lizbeth Goodman, Director of the SMART lab Digital Media Institute. Lizbeth discussed projects she was involved with, most of which was working with individuals with disabilities. Lizbeth and her team helped these disabled people to interact with technology in a beneficial way. They designed bespoke software to carter for the needs of the people they worked with on an individual basis. They are a non-profit organisation. It was fascinating to hear her describing some of the people she has worked with and the difference to their lives that can be achieved through the use of technology. Again Second Life was a big part of Lizbeth interaction with the children she worked with. One story Lizbeth told us was that of a young disabled girl in New York, confined to a wheel chair she decided she would like to be a giraffe in Second life and see the world from a giraffe's perspective.

Other speakers were Eric Zimmerman, CEO GameLab, New York, Not a very productive speech, terrible web cam linkup made it hard for him to articulate himself successful, and the whole thing sound repetitive. Caroline Anderson, CEO SilverTongue Software, she discussed building a serious games company in NI and the difficulties she faced in the process. Emma Robison, CEO DoddleDawg Entertainment, Emma launch her company's new serious game "Recall". She spoke about the development process and the help she received from the University and NORBIC. The final speaker was Paul McElvaney, CEO Agility Consulting, Paul discussed his involvement in e-Learning and how thought the serious games industry would evolve in the future.

After the day, I thought about my game, "Free Radicals" in relation to the serious games I saw on display. I've now realized that my game could be labeled as a serious game. I hope players of my game, whilst having fun and enjoying the game will come away with a little bit of knowledge of the ozone layer and how it work at an atomic level. I hope it will be as close to a simulation of the chemical reactions that take place in the ozone as I can manage in the time I've got for development.