Discussion of Game Engines suitable for Serious Games Development

Serious Games Source has published a feature Serious Game Engine Shootout by Richard Carey. It discusses the best engines for building serious games. The notion of game engine for serious games used in the feature is based on the general notion of a game engine (Wikipedia) and enhanced with the specific requirements for serious games; e.g. player behaviour and action recording and possible integration with external systems. The feature discusses five game engines built specifically for serious games: Breakaway’s mōsbē, Numedeon’s NICE, Forterra’s OLIVE, Muzzy Lane’s SIGMA, and Virtual Heroes’ Unreal3 Advanced Learning Technology as well as commercial game engines such as Gambry, Quazal’s Eterna, Torque, Multiverse, Unity, Neverwinter Nights and Second Life. The feature gives basic information on all the engines as well as a short review.

Blog Journalism Culture meets the old-school in Serious Games area

I have been following the Blog of Clark Aldrich for a while now. The idea behind the blog is very clear and the execution is very crisp providing a very useful resource for Serious Games designers and researchers alike. One post, however, did catch me as a bit odd against the blog setting: the bio of Clark Aldrich himself.

The biographical post describes the author of the blog in a summary manner. The content is in all regards what people would expect to see. The aspect that strikes me as odd and non-blog-like is the presentation: the bio of Clark Aldrich is written in third person. Yes, this is the norm for old-school media such as printed books and television, but it in my opinion it is against the basic conceptions of blogging. Blogs are usually written in the first person and when people describe themselves they give a personal account of themselves. The bio as it is seems to distance the author from potential readers. Maybe tha’s one possible explanation why there aren’t many comments in his blog?

Nothing major here, just this random note. By the way, check out Clark Aldrich’s blog if you haven’t yet. It’s an ever-growing collection of different mechanics, notions and design patterns useful in serious game design.

Nordic Serious Games

We are making a project proposal about Nordic Serious Games for the Nordic Innovation Centre (NICe). This is something that I’ve talked about with many colleagues in different Nordic countries about as long as I’ve been a researcher in this field. And NICe seems to be the perfect funder. Allthough we are pressed by the tight schedule (deadline is 14.12.) the fact that this seems genuinely a need in the Nordic region helps us a lot. We’ve already had numerous expressions of interest and joint operation, allthough we were able to start the proposal preparation as late as last week (NICe’s timetable, not ours). So, if you are interested, please check out our project webpage or contact me (antti.kirjavainen at jyu.fi).

Vocational edugames project in Jkl, Finland

Got this from the University website. The Jyväskylä Vocational Institute in co-operation with the Institute of Educational Research of our university and Korento Oy have been developing 3D games for vocational education for over a year now. They launched their first game, SECURE, last spring and the second one, VOLTAGE, is due this fall. SECURE is about work security in construction sites and VOLTAGE is about small house electricity. There are demonstration videos of the games on the project web site. The project ends next spring.