U.S. Department of Defense Launches Casual Games Portal

The U.S. Department of Defense has opened a casual games website aiming to reinforce workforce education principles for students attending the Defense Acquisition University (DAU). The DAU games site features 13 minigames covering topics such as cost analysis, defense acquisition management, and indicators of procurement fraud. Also available at the DAU's games site is the Invasion Prevention Corporation's CPI Game, a continuous process improvement tool simulator that was named a finalist in the I/ITTSEC's 2010 Serious Games Showcase and Challenge. Defense Acquisition University developers created the website to mimic the functionality of popular casual games portals such as Kongregate, offering players customizable profiles and unlockable badges rewarding skilled play. The DAU's Global Learning Technologies Center will release a new game every month. The first two scheduled offerings for 2011 are Artemis: A Cost Estimating Game and Time Traveler: A Rates Game.