Serious Games Summit Developer Showcase Revealed

Author: by Staff

The organizers of next month's Serious Games Summit have announced the hosting of the second annual Developer Showcase event in Washington D.C., to take place Tuesday, October 31, from 4:30 PM – 7:30 PM. This gathering, which is part of Serious Games Summit itself and is currently looking to round out its roster of exhibitors, is aimed at bringing developers and program managers together to network. It will also enable developers to demo game content to interested parties. The ultimate goal is to align those groups with dedicated funds for serious game projects with the best developer talent in the market in order to create successful serious game applications, and developers who are interested in contributing should consult the SGS DC sponsorship page for more information on putting their company forward. SGS D.C., which is created by the CMP Game Group (as is Gamasutra.com) 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. A major keynote is being conducted by influential game, film and media scholar Henry Jenkins. In addition, some of the 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.”