Brandon Schapekahm: serious games
Friday, May 21st, 2010 | Workshops
Brandon Schapekahm is part of the Johnson Center for Simulation (JCS), which is part of the Pine Technical College in Pine City, Minnesota. JCS was founded as part of a regional project to extend East Central Minnesota’s technology infrastructure and services and their projects include scenario and procedural training applications, military immersive simulations, and game development.
For this session, Schapekahm chose some good examples of serious games that JCS has developed. An interesting discussion ensued, on comparing what Second Life and other 3D game engines such as UDK and Ogre can offer the historical reconstruction of historical sites. We saw some example of the kind of detailed textures allowed by UDL and discussed the pertinence of this vis-a-vis the social aspect of a (proprietary) platform such as Second Life.
I argued that there are always negotiations that need to be made: factors to be considered include the graphic resolution allowed , the accessibility, the proprietary/open sources aspects and the social aspect. I brought up Mark Skwarek and Joseph Hocking’s CHildren of Arcadia project where a 3d game engine much like Ogre was used to create a baroque environment reproducing Manhattan financial district. the environment can be modified by parameters from fed through the Internet such as the status of the stock market. This is something the IC project may be interested in looking into: rather than stock market we can have virtually any type of social media live ‘feeding’ the game environment, which would therefore be an organic entity in constant change.
This discussion triggered the idea that it would very useful to have the same historical site reconstructed using a number of engines (and approaches) so that the team can effectively evaluate the direction to pursue. We discussed the possibility of an award to be announced to both the social/serious games and the scholarly communities.
By Ana Boa-Ventura
1 Comment to Brandon Schapekahm: serious games
A project of this scope and functionality is going to require a solid foundation in technology. At the current level of funding, giving the game development and scholarly communities the opportunity to test different methods is likely the best approach. I do however think it would be a good idea for our internal group to test some of these technologies for ourselves. This will offer a definitive plan B.
I feel our final product will be a harmony of several technologies that cater to each individual goal; allowing us to take advantage of the strengths, and minimize the weaknesses of each.
The path ahead is sure to be interesting!
Leave a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
June 16, 2010