Serious Games Summit DC 2006 Adds Sessions

The CMP Game Group (which also runs Serious Games Source and sister site Gamasutra) has announced the first set of sessions for the latest iteration of the Serious Games Summit conference, discussing games for education, training, military, health, and other uses. SGS D.C., which will take place from Monday, October 30 through Tuesday, October 31, 2006 at the Crystal Gateway Marriott in Arlington, VA, will include multiple sessions focusing on a wide variety of topics. In particular, some of the first topics announced for SGS 2006 include gameLAB researcher Roberto Dillon's session titled “A Virtual Orchestra Game for Introducing Children to Music”; Digitalmill co-founder Ben Sawyer's session titled “Serious Stuff Gamers Do”; and Sandia National Laboratory researcher Elaine Raybourn's scheduled serious games training topic titled “The Ground Truth about Deploying Game-based Training Solutions.” A particularly interesting-sounding new session is 'World of YourCraft: Learning & Collaboration in Massively Multiplayer Online Games' from the University Of Wisconsin's Constance Steinkuehler, explaining how "gamers who have already mastered the social/material practices" of titles such as World Of Warcraft help teach "newer gamers who lack such knowledge and skill". Other serious games related sessions scheduled to take place at the conference include area/code's creative director Frank Lantz's session titled “The Return of the Real: Using Real-world Gaming to Achieve Real-world Goals” which will “outline how big games can be used for education and social change”; and Danube University Krems professor Michael Wagner, who will speak regarding competitive computer gaming in a session titled “The Serious Side of eSports.” The Summit's purpose is to provide a platform for game developers, buyers and industry professionals to exchange ideas and advance the state of the art of serious games development in areas such as corporate training, education, first responders, government, health, military, science, and social change. For more information regarding Serious Games Summit DC 2006, interested parties can visit the event's official website.