Like games do you? Suppose you think they’re kind of [I]fun[/I], eh? Well listen up, kid, cleverer and more important people than you spend their time thinking about videogames and what they can use them for. While you look forward to the Tokyo Game Show next week, the movers and shakers are gearing up for the Serious Games Summit which starts in Washington DC on October 31st.
That’s right, it’s even called the Serious Games Summit because it’s for deeply serious people, and now the equally serious keynotes (that means things that serious people talk about when they get together to talk seriously about things) have been published. First of all, an inaugural discussion on the Monday is titled: ‘What’s So Serious about Game Design? The Art or the Science?’ Yes, we know – it sounds like an impossibly dull and sanctimonious Edge editorial from about four years ago, but it’s actually a conversation between Dr. Peter Perla, a Naval analyst, and Douglas Whatley, CEO of BreakAway games. Bet you’re already feeling trivial and irrelevant by comparison in the shadow of all this immense seriousness.
The second day sees a lecture entitled ‘Riding the Cutting Edge of Distributed Intelligence’. Our first instinct was to think that riding any kind of cutting edge could result in serious injury. Then we realised it was a metaphor and were simply confused about what it could possibly mean. But it’s actually about the flow of information between human and computer, apparently games can do it much better than some conventional interfaces and people envy them for it. The lecture is given by Dr. Dave Warner, who’s an M.D. [I]and[/I] a Ph.D. and is director of the Institute for Interventional Informatics. He’s currently working on a project for the US Army, which is about as serious as you can get.
So next time you’re enjoying your little video games, consider that one day people will be having just as much fun as they bomb innocents in real life! Now that’s serious.
That’s right, it’s even called the Serious Games Summit because it’s for deeply serious people, and now the equally serious keynotes (that means things that serious people talk about when they get together to talk seriously about things) have been published. First of all, an inaugural discussion on the Monday is titled: ‘What’s So Serious about Game Design? The Art or the Science?’ Yes, we know – it sounds like an impossibly dull and sanctimonious Edge editorial from about four years ago, but it’s actually a conversation between Dr. Peter Perla, a Naval analyst, and Douglas Whatley, CEO of BreakAway games. Bet you’re already feeling trivial and irrelevant by comparison in the shadow of all this immense seriousness.
The second day sees a lecture entitled ‘Riding the Cutting Edge of Distributed Intelligence’. Our first instinct was to think that riding any kind of cutting edge could result in serious injury. Then we realised it was a metaphor and were simply confused about what it could possibly mean. But it’s actually about the flow of information between human and computer, apparently games can do it much better than some conventional interfaces and people envy them for it. The lecture is given by Dr. Dave Warner, who’s an M.D. [I]and[/I] a Ph.D. and is director of the Institute for Interventional Informatics. He’s currently working on a project for the US Army, which is about as serious as you can get.
So next time you’re enjoying your little video games, consider that one day people will be having just as much fun as they bomb innocents in real life! Now that’s serious.
Comments
majin dboy 9 Sep 2005 22:44
1/3
already got my ticket
Pilot13 10 Sep 2005 00:01
2/3
Big shiney metal things get my heart pumping.
Pilot13 11 Sep 2005 16:57
3/3
I meant to put that post in the metal dogs news post. The curse of firefox.