As you can imagine, a reduction in training requirements for a cohort of new navy recruits can reduce resource cost substantially in terms of both time and money.  If the investment in serious games and performance simulations to deliver training modules is proven to facilitate real, monetary savings then perhaps the men who measure ROI so closely will start to support the introduction of more of these types of serious games courses into their training departments.

What better time to introduce effective cost saving measures that improve performance than in an age of austerity and pocket pinching!

For the full study on how the military’s introduction of a serious games course into their training schedules improved performance, take a look here.

Miska 3d Game

If you are the developer of this game, please feel free to drop us an email or post more about your simulation on our forums, we’d love to hear from you.

Schmahl Science Workshop, the charity formed in 1996 to provide hands-on science activities for children in a free-form environment have been given the opportunity to add serious games development into the charity’s portfolio of practical activities for junior and senior high school students to take part in.

The Schmahl Science Workshop already count science and technology experiments and lessons including biology, chemistry, earth science, forensic science, mathematics and physics as part of their wide variety of hands on activites for children to take part in and now they can add serious games design into the mix too.

The charity, based in San Jose, California, were delighted to receive an email from international serious games and simulation company, Caspian Learning, who asked the workshop if they’d like to be the beneficiary of a donation of an educational licence to Caspian Learning’s award-winning 3d authoring tool, Thinking Worlds.

The idea behind the donation was that the children could use their practical experience in the workshop’s science experiments to put together creative 3d simulations that would support the practical exercises they were undertaking whilst improving their technical pc skills. It was an interesting and unusual use of the serious games software and it will be even more interesting to see what the classes put together.

Belinda Lowe-Schmahl, founder of the charity, was both surprised and grateful for the opportunity and was very keen to make the most of the offer and is encouraging her students to take advantage of the technology in order to put their creative hats to the test.

Project wise we are working on a number of new immersive simulation projects in May -

• A change management learning experience
• An educational finance game that will be delivered through Facebook
• Two different applications for Healthcare clients

Some work in progress screenshots below:

Now, we aim to take this another big step forward by enabling the option of publishing Thinking Worlds Sims through the Java framework. We have completed the first stage of work on this and it is looking good. We are now testing this functionality with clients that offer some of the toughest network conditions for suppliers – military, government and banking.

We demonstrated the functionality to military clients last week at the ITEC exhibition in London, as part of our joint venture with Bohemia Interactive and the VBS2 engine. Take a look at the work done so far – click on the image below. NOTE – please ignore the content, this was put together live at the show and my SME skills for military content are limited to say the least. When you run the sim, approach the soldier, then run along the side of the convoy to speak to civilians. When you receive a list of 4 options, choose the bottom one – that is triggered to blow, literally.

Next few weeks will see the results of the testing, plus the addition of SCORM functionality and also the option to publish as Java webstart aswell. Enjoy.

Much more to come on this one. Here is the official press release to fill in the details:

“Bohemia Interactive and Caspian Learning announce a formal partnership which will help shape the future of the military simulation and serious games market.

Bohemia Interactive, the foremost military serious games organisation and Caspian Learning, the leading rapid simulation and serious games company are forging a formal partnership that will bring exciting new offerings to military markets around the world. Given the technology and heritage of both organisations, this strategic venture will herald new offerings to the military sector and help to solve current training and simulation issues experienced by defence customers.

Bohemia Interactive has been serving the military simulation community for almost a decade, and will bring its gold standard and industry leading simulation product “VBS2” to the partnership. VBS2 – Virtual Battlespace 2 – is a fully interactive, three-dimensional, PC-based synthetic environment specifically developed for military training, mission rehearsal and analysis.

Caspian Learning will bring its multi award winning and globally unique 3D simulation authoring software and engine, Thinking Worlds, to the partnership. Thinking Worlds will enable the strategic venture to capitalise on both the true thin client delivery mechanisms of Caspian’s core technology and the rapid simulation and scenario editing capabilities of the authoring interface.

The fusion of the current gold standard military serious games product – VBS2 – with the thin client and rapid development cycle of Thinking Worlds, will be a powerful and compelling proposition to defence clients around the world.”
Go here for full release

Everyone wins during this serious gaming employee event

Procter & Gamble (P&G), the world’s leading producer ofhousehold products, employs some 135,000 people innearly 80 countries. The company partnered with IBM to enhance its annual off-site employee recognition event byintroducing the audience to innovative technologies.Company leaders wanted to leverage the event to improve employee satisfaction and boost awareness of how new technologies can improve processes and reduce costs invarious areas of the business.

IBM and Caspian Learning Ltd. partnered on the development of a unique serious game using Caspian’s ThinkingWorlds platform for the live recognition event. During the event, the audience became rapidly immersed in a highly engaging challenge to interact as a group to identify competitive business strategies and reinforce key leadership attributes. For each participant, IBM developers also provided a “virtual-world-ready” 3D avatar that not only looked like the employee, but could be transferred into the widely pervasive Second Life virtual social environment forfurther exploration of immersive learning possibilities. The fun yet relevant and informative approach resonated with participants and boosted employee morale. The event offered unique and memorable hands-on experiences with 3D Internet technologies by combining real with virtual worlds. Each participant was asked to identify opportunities in which innovative 3D technologies could help improve processes and employee and customer satisfaction, and how they might help reduce costs.

Through IBM’s Learning Innovation Visioning Workshop key stakeholders were engaged in laying the foundation for identifying further opportunities to leverage these technologies to improve learning and collaboration enterprise-wide, as well as positively impact client processes while reducing costs.

Take a look at the BumpTop demo video. Very nice use of the 3D technology, which has both form and functional benefits.

What gives? It seems as though everything that you thought was bad for you, that you then thought was good for you was actually bad. Then everything you thought was bad for you, and hoped was bad for you, was actually good. Confused? Click on the images for the articles: