Serious Games Summit announced for D.C. in October

Digitalmill and CMP Game Group are collaborating to present the Serious Games Summit in Washington, D.C., on October 18-19, 2004. The conference will cover the uses of gaming technology in areas outside the entertainment sector, including education, national defense, homeland security, management, and training. Additionally, studies of game-based simulations and solutions currently in use in these fields will be presented.

“As games become an everyday part of our culture, more organizations are finding incredible uses for the technology, talent, and ideas behind this new art form. That’s why this is becoming a major, new sector within the games industry, and our mission is to grow that field,” said Ben Sawyer, cofounder of the Serious Games Summit.

Professionals from various fields, both public and private, will be on hand to meet with authorities in game development. The current list of speakers includes Dan Daglow of Stormfront Studios Inc., Kurt Squire from the University of Wisconsin, Stanford University’s Henry Lowood, and Col. Casey Wardynski of the US Army.

Delivering the keynote address will be Jim Dunnigan, an expert in military affairs. While the specific topic of the address has yet to be announced, Dunnigan is an avid wargamer who developed a number of tabletop war games for Avalon Hill in the late 1960s. Since then, he has worked with the US military by developing simulations and currently serves on the technical advisory board at STRICOM, the Army's wargame development operation.

The Serious Games Summit was originally held at the annual Game Developers Conference on the West Coast. While the summit will now have a stand-alone East Coast event sponsored by the Serious Games Initiative, a Washington, D.C.-based project that focuses on applications of games in the public sector, it will still reconvene in San Jose at the Game Developers Conference in March of 2005.

More information on the Serious Games Summit can be found at the official Web site.