Group items tagged

This article examines the foundations of gaming and related concepts, such as policy exercises and serious gaming, in a public policy making context. Examining the relevant publications in Simulation & Gaming since 1969, the author looks back at the development of gaming simulation for purposes such as public policy analysis and planning, and reviews the underlying theories and empirical evidence. The author highlights the recognition that the success of gaming for policy making derives largely from the unique power of that gaming to capture and integrate both the technical-physical and the social-political complexities of policy problems.

My view on the how, what and why of policy gaming.

PING is an online game made for secondary schools, forming a starting point to discuss the subject 'poverty' and what it means to be poor. Ping is aimed at the students of the secondary and third degree. The students become the main characters in the game. They can choose between Jim or Sofia, who, due to certain circumstances, end up on the street and need to find their own path. PING shows that games can help to introduce complex social subjects like poverty in the class room. The partners of the PING project want to contribute to the social debate encouraging the use of games at school as a tool to open the difficult discussion about poverty

Summer 2012 Game Development Conferences Compiled by Ben Sawyer "Recently I saw several friends say there were a number of game conferences coming up so I put together the following schedule and links to make sure everyone knows where to go, when, and what for."

Gaming for decisions

One of the catalogues of COTS serious games. Not recently updated however.

As today's policy challenges become more complex, it has become clear that American media - online news, television, radio, newspapers, and magazines - are not up to the task of explaining the problems underlying them or providing citizens with all the information they need to engage in public conversations about them. Democracy cannot function properly without those conversations. But one new medium - videogames - may well fill the gap. By their very nature, videogames can engage players in ways that enable players to make their way through the intricacies of policy problems. As players begin to understand them in all their complexity, games may well help their governments forge solutions.

For over 100 years, the hospital has been the core of our healthcare system, and a pillar of every community-the central hub where people enter and leave this world, and where scientific discoveries become life saving procedures. But in the last couple decades, technological, social and economic forces have chipped away at this model. As these trends continue-making traditional clinical environments punishingly expensive to run, and increasingly less necessary for many healthcare needs - the future of the community hospital is uncertain. This is the premise of our new Foresight Engine game on the Future of the Hospital-a 24-hour collaborative forecasting game playing from 12pm EST (9am PST) January 8 to 12pm EST (9am PST) on January 9, 2013!

A comment from the Economist on the ECB game, which is at: http://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/educational/economia/html/index.en.html

another example of classification and indexing serious games

"LEADERSNew technologies are helping to connect governments and change agents from across sectors,and putting new frontiers within reach of traditional institutions. In this section, we provide an over-view of four such frontiers: social innovation, online gaming for the public good, crowdsourcing (and crowdfunding), and Gov2.0.A. SOCIAL INNOVATION nologies, and to problem-solving more generally, areSocial innovation at its core is the successful implementa-tion of new ideas that meet social needs.46"

"World Without Oil was a serious alternate reality game in 2007, a massively collaborative simulation of a global oil crisis. Here's the 411. Peak oil people, checkit! More at www.worldwithoutoil.org. Video by Kiyash Monsef!"

The Serious Game Acedemy, part of GALA and ESGS, brings together European researchers in the field of serious gaming.

Forio simulations improve public policy development and implementation by allowing you to: *Model sophisticated behaviors by importing data and formulas from Excel, AnyLogic, and other programs. *Have global access to your Sim via popular web browsers. *Control access with secure user privileges. *Implement updates centrally, ensuring users have the most up-to-date information (preventing old or obselete info from being reused). *Operate worry-free, with dependable security and design measures. Customized simulations apps are easily accessible via standard web browsers, allowing users to easily make adjustments, share and compare results. With Forio's public policy simulations, users can create interactive online tools to generate, manipulate and illustrate "what if" scenarios that are ideal for long-term policy models.With Forio's public policy simulations, users can create interactive online tools to generate, manipulate and illustrate "what if" scenarios that are ideal for long-term policy models.

easy ready made tool to turn system dynamics models into playable games.

In a government bureaucracy, any innovation can take years to come to fruition. But that can change, says Tom Kalil, deputy director for policy for the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House. Kalil recently participated in a two-day conference at Wharton titled, "For the Win: Serious Gamification," which looked at the application of gaming techniques in business, education, government and other scenarios. Before the conference, Kalil spoke with Kevin Werbach, a conference organizer and a professor of legal studies and business ethics at Wharton, about why gamification has become a hot topic at the White House.

We help cities, housing corporations and cultural organizations make interactive and collaborative plans with multiple stakeholders.

Nice example of how games can be used for urban planning.

"Online game Foldit adds puzzle to investigate proteins to aid sepsis treatment... Gamers solving a previous Foldit puzzle remodeled an important reaction in organic synthesis in three weeks-a solution that evaded scientists for years."

Play to be Mario Draghi, form the ECB web site, and learn economics and politics.