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Showing posts from July, 2016

Simulated Workplace Experiences Grounded In Reading Standards Connect School To Career

Community in Crisis , developed by FableVision Studios for Classroom, Inc. , has won bronze honors in the 2016 International Serious Play Awards competition in the K-12 Literacy category. Community in Crisis is the second game in Classroom, Inc.’s Read to Lead learning series ( After the Storm was the debut game). The series is a set of immersive literacy learning games and curriculum designed to middle school Common Core State Standards in reading and writing. Both Serious Games immerse players in a personalized workplace experience in which students must think critically and use evidence to solve real-world problems, all while balancing the hectic demands of an exciting workplace. Off-game, students work together to analyze their workplace decisions, improving problem-solving and collaboration competencies. Community in Crisis is designed around three target ELA Common Core State Standards that call on 4 th -6 th grade students to use foundational skills fo

Serious Games Addressing The Challenge Of Global Antibiotic Resistance

Superbugs , developed by Preloaded , has won silver honors in the 2016 International Serious Play Awards competition in the Healthcare category. The mobile Serious Game was launched early July in partnership with the  Longitude Prize , a five-year challenge with a £10 million prize fund which aims to solve the problem of global antibiotic resistance. The game explains the science behind antibiotic resistance to players, and helps spread the word about the Longitude Prize. Over five years, the Prize is challenging everyone, from amateur scientists to professional researchers, to invent a transformative, quick, affordable and easy-to-use test to tell you if you need antibiotics, and if possible, which ones you should use to rule out unnecessary uses of antibiotics. Using antibiotics when we don't need them means they will stop working sooner, so it's urgent we find better ways to diagnose and treat infections using just the drugs we need. The development of antibioti

Serious Play Conference 2016 Best Of Show Award Winner

Doug Whatley, Founder/CEO - BreakAway Games, receives the 2016 Best of Show Award from Sue Bohle, Executive Director - Serious Games Association, Producer - Serious Play Conference Breakaway Games is the winner of the 2016 Best of Show Award for the Serious Game Vital Signs ED™ , among more than 30 studios, publishers, companies and academic student groups that have won gold, silver and bronze honors in the 2016 International Serious Play Awards competition.  In the game, players take on the role of a doctor working in an emergency department. The player’s job is to visit patients as they appear in one of the available exam rooms, review the patient’s condition via their case presentation chart, and order procedures relevant to the patient’s complaint. While waiting on the completion of these procedures, the player can attend to other patients and/or any distractions. Distractions play an important role in Vital Signs ED™ . The player must hand

Coherent SG Helps Serious Games Developers Deliver Outstanding UI Faster

For the last four years, Coherent Labs has established itself as a leader in the Game User Interface middleware market. By using Coherent SDK , game developers and designers are leveraging the power of web technologies to create stunning and high-performance UI for both entertainment games and simulation environments, while saving up to 50% of the UI development time and resources. Following the success in game development market in the past four years, the company is now expanding and is also tailoring its products for training and simulation industries.  Coherent SG is a division of Coherent Labs solely dedicated to provide innovative UI tools for "Serious Games" development.  Big names in Military and Civil Simulations are already using  Coherent , such as Cubic Corporation, Bohemia Interactive Simulations (BISim), NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), G2G3 and  Mass Virtual  (RealTime Immersive rebranded). "Coherent SG d

Serious Games Placing Players At The Core Of EU Common Agricultural Policy

“Among many of the logistical aspects of Britain and Europe split, a major focus of negotiation will likely be the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), a cornerstone of the European Union that accounts for roughly 40 percent of its budget” (source: Stratfor Report). Implemented to ensure food supplies for Europe, stable and reasonable prices for consumers, as well as fair income for European farmers, the policy was introduced in 1962. Since then, CAP has undergone several changes in order to reduce its cost (from 71% of the EU budget in 1984 to 39% in 2013), to respond to new concerns about the environment, and to also consider rural development in its aims. CAP creation was an early step on the road to European integration and central to the formation of European Common Market. Nowadays, the Common Agricultural Policy prepares its evolution. European member countries have been working on food safety, natural resources management, climatic changes and price volatility, among

Serious Games Raising Interest In Science Behind Cancer-Immunity Cycle

Immunotherapy Mini-Games , developed by Ayogo Health Inc. in collaboration with Genentech , has won silver honors in the 2016 International Serious Play Awards competition in the Healthcare category. The award winning health games include  T-Cells Attack  and  Lymph Node Labyrinth , each relating to the science behind the  Cancer-Immunity Cycle . Ayogo created the mini-games for different steps in the Cancer-Immunity Cycle to help educate player about the science underlying cancer immunotherapy. First published in the journal Immunity in 2013, the Cancer-Immunity Cycle developed by Dan Chen and Ira Mellman has become an intellectual framework for cancer immunotherapy research. For decades, immunologists had demonstrated the capacity of the immune system to recognize and kill cancer cells in the laboratory. The problem was, they couldn’t reliably translate those same results in patients. Cancer uses a sort of “cellular camouflage”, tricking the immune system into s

Serious Games Expand Occupational Therapists’ Professional Development

NBCOT Navigator™ , developed by BreakAway games , has won silver honors in the 2016 International Serious Play Awards competition in the Healthcare category. BreakAway partnered with NBCOT (The National Board for Certification in Occupational Therapy) to create an online suite of competency development tools designed to augment and support Occupational Therapists’ professional development. According to NBCOT President & CEO, Paul Grace, NBCOT Navigator is a convenient, interactive and case-based way for OTs to sharpen their skills at any time and continually test their competency against contemporary practices standards. NBCOT Navigator is also designed to help employers facilitate the ongoing professional development and certification process of their occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants. Employers will be able to direct their staff to the tool suite at any time to measure themselves and test their competency against contemporary practice

Serious Games Help Students Build A Positive Credit History

Night of the Living Debt , developed by the Learning Games Lab at New Mexico State University , has won gold honors in the 2016 International Serious Play Awards competition under the K-12 Financial Literacy category. Night of the Living Debt offers lessons in financial literacy for young people through a video game scenario created by University of Idaho Extension educators Luke Erickson and Lyle Hansen. The free game is available for distribution on Apple iTunes for use on iPads. Designed for high schoolers, it is also suitable for adults interested in learning about credit issues and debt, giving players the opportunity to learn real world principles of credit-building. The underlying learning concepts driving game context are Credit Scores, Credit Reports, Healthy Credit Card Strategies, Subprime Lending, Saving and Emergency Funds.    Funded by agricultural lender CoBank, the game was developed by New Mexico State University for the Northwest Youth Financial