Filament Games of Madison, WI made a great showing at the National STEM Video Game Challenge this week. Their game, You Make Me Sick!, won the developer grand prize. The game teaches children about infection by having them design a bacteria or virus to infect a host. Congratulations! Only chronologically related, an announcement was recently made by DigiPen Institute of Technology that they will be hosting their first annual Serious Play Conference August 22-24, 2011 in Redmond
An article was posted last week in the Winnipeg Free Press and reposted at Gamasutra later that day about Microsoft’s Kinect platform being used to assist in surgery at the Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. The Kinect is being used to allow a surgeon to manipulate images without having to touch a computer, cutting down the length of time required to perform surgeries and keeping the surgeons more focused on the task at hand. Such innovation is possible in large
The Games+Learning+Society Conference, which we previously announced is taking place in Madison, WI on June 15-17, has extended its session abstract submission deadline to March 14, which is next Monday. GLS is in its 7th year and although it remains a small conference it draws big names in serious gaming such as this year’s keynote speakers: Michael Levine, Katie Salem, Eric Zimmerman and James Paul Gee. Don’t miss
MODSIM World Canada 2011 Conference and Expo will take place in Ottawa from June 20-22. The event organizers describe it as an “international summit for disseminating recent advances in the field of system modeling and simulation.” Health, medical and biotech are the topics of one of its four tracks this year. Registration will open in March. Check out their site for more information. Be sure to note the link at the bottom of the page with instructions for submitting
The Games for Health Project is another group that thinks healthcare education and gaming go well together (we agree!) and their 2011 conference is coming soon. It is their 7th annual conference and will take place May 17-19 at the Hyatt Harborside in Boston. Read more about the project and the conference at their website. It may be a bit late to submit content to the conference, but submissions are still being accepted. You can check for requirements
Games for Change is an organization describing itself as the “leading global advocate for supporting and making games for social impact.” They will be hosting their 8th annual Games for Change Festival in New York City on June 20-22, 2011. Along with the festival announcement they’ve posted a call for content asking for, among other things, games for education. In particular, 5-7 games in progress will be highlighted and demoed for a panel of designers and funders. The
Dare I say it? That went really well. We’re still awaiting feedback, but both of the early sessions drew good crowds and the arcade was absolutely packed. A great big thank you to everyone who spoke about serious gaming today, everyone who brought a game to the arcade, and everyone curious and brave enough to come check out the serious games track. If you didn’t get your fill of serious gaming goodness today there’s more to be had tomorrow at the
Eric’s in back to back meetings today so you get updates from me instead! IMSH is humming right along. If you haven’t registered yet make sure you do it soon. The lines at the registration desk weren’t too long this morning, but as the first open sessions begin this afternoon and the last few stragglers come in tomorrow morning those lines are going to get pretty scary. Speaking of sessions opening this afternoon, did you realize that IMSH is a full