Developers of so-called serious games gathered in Washington Monday for a conference on how to use electronic games to teach specific skills.
Dubbed the "Serious Games Summit," its organizers hope to expand gaming's utility in promoting warfare and cooperation as well as helping students learn basic subjects, the Washington Post reported.
"This summit is about creating games that can solve other types of problems," said Ben Sawyer, organizer of this week's summit, who grew up playing video and computer games and who now runs Digitalmill, a Portland, Maine-based consulting company that produces market research on the gaming industry.
He said some types of problems that might be resolved by gaming include how to train soldiers to go into a new culture, how to get people to work together in teams and how to teach principles of science to children.
"Why not have a million people try to figure out how to reduce CO 2 emissions online?" said David Rejeski, project director for the Serious Games Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a non-partisan think tank. "Let a million people play it as a game, globally. Then see what happens."
© Copyright 2004 by United Press International
