YES
- At 060606, members of the game industry, cultural institutions, academics and students will discuss what the future of Serious Games holds. Both theoretical and practical, subjects of our debate include: What are the Stakes in Serious Games, what are the most important rules for developing serious games, and finally, How do people learn when they play.
- In the spirit of Serious Games, at 060606, participants are both audience members, game players and potential speakers. When participants register at our reception desk, they choose to join one of four teams, the Challengers, the Pretenders, the Whirlers or the High Rollers. They also submit a paper copy of your game autobiography.
- From there, participants and their teammates decide how to meet the challenges of the three conference levels, as listed in the schedule below. In Level One, they define their stakes in Serious Games. In Level Two, they share your best advice for serious game design. Finally, in Level Three, they demonstrate their game development know-how by creating a game for all conference participants.
- Serious Games recognize the constructive principles in gameplay and connect them directly with meaningful learning goals, which may be germaine to the well-being of a community.
- Serious Games are very effective at broadcasting ideas benefitting the common good into underserved communities and communities who are hard to access through traditional educational structures.
- Serious Games are tools for engagement for geographically scattered communities.
- Serious Games condition players for effective behaviors in challenging scenarios. They provide insight and preparation for unpredictable scenarios which might otherwise lead to panic.
- Serious Games are a way for policymakers to understand and explore the positive aspects of games.
- All experience is conflict or exploration, and the latter is just conflict between knowing and not knowing. Without games, we can't safely practice conflict, without safety, we can't explore being on both sides of the conflict, and without exploring we can't know anything outside what we already think is the right kind of conflict. Where technology is the our purposeful acceleration of natural processes, games are our purposeful technology for our empathic processes.
- Due to the nature of acceleration in game space, serious games offer a unique testing ground for predicting certain outcomes. (LH)
Please contribute to this list with an email to {niemeyer at berkeley dot edu}