Study: Business Simulations Raise Grades for Undergrads

Dr. Richard Blunt over at BX-Games has a non-refereed paper on eLearn Magazine regarding a study of three college classes split into control and experimental groups to examine video game effectiveness for learning. The courses consisted of freshman business students, a junior level economics class, and a junior level management class.

Portions of each class received the intervention while the remainder did not. Grades were compared between the two groups from each class. The introductory business experimental group used the game Industry Giant II, the economics students used Zapitalism, and the management students used Virtual U (a free download thanks to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation). Here is Dr. Blunt’s summary of the results:

The findings show that classes using the game had significantly higher means than those classes that did not use the game. There were no significant differences between male or female scores, regardless of game play, while both genders scored significantly higher with game play than without. There were no significant differences between ethnic groups, while all ethnic groups scored significantly higher with game play. Lastly, students ages 40 and under scored significantly higher with game play, whereas students age 41 and up did not.

In short, the studies found that, at least in some circumstances, the application of serious games significantly increases learning.

The comments section has some interesting conversation, especially regarding business simulations, which have been used in B-schools for at least 50 years or so. One could argue the board game Monopoly is a business simulation, I suppose, and if so that would stretch back their birth date to the 1930s (or much earlier, if conspiracy theorists are correct).

Other than that, the importance of the study is that it seems to show an intervention may lead students to a higher grade, at least in undergraduate business courses. Somebody will need to determine if students who volunteer for interventions such as a business simulation video game would earn a higher grade anyway just because of their own innate study ethics, or if the games serve to encourage slackers to work harder, etc.

References:
Blunt, R. (2009, December 1). Do serious games work? Results from three studies. [Online.] Available: http://elearnmag.org/subpage.cfm?section=research&article=9-1

The Rise of Photo-Realistic Animation

The bar keeps bumping up higher for quality animations in a videogame. Word came out this week that Afrika, a new safari photo hunt game for the PlayStation 3, would provide ultra-realistic shots of wildlife on the savannah and make good use of the PS3’s graphics capabilities. The game required a mere 25 developers, compared to the 100 or so that many big titles take, and Sony’s sales expectations are modest. Still, the possibilities revolving around photo-realism add to the expectations for future games: serious, educational, and traditional entertainment titles alike.

On the anthromorphological side of things, check out this video, She’s Not Real, from The Times Online in the UK. If you weren’t told ahead of time, it’s possible you wouldn’t know you were watching an animated human … at least at first. Toward the end of the minute long footage, the programmers give a taste of what they can do with an animated person, in a game for instance.

Weight Watchers, the Video Game

Here’s an interesting article from Clive Thompson over at Wired comparing Weight Watchers Online to MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. There are many similarities, Thompson notes, including leveling and rewards. He’s got a great point. I noticed the same thing about my kids’ tae kwon do classes. Of course the idea of designing work teams modeled after WoW guilds is not new, either. Here’s a closer look at the idea of “Corporate Warcraft.”

Beck and Wade pointed out, and are echoed by people like Karl Kapp, that young workers often approach work in a gaming framing of mind. Work objectives become “quests,” paychecks bring in “gold,” promotions equate to “leveling up,” and their bosses either become “guild leaders,” or “dungeon bosses,” depending on whether they help or hinder the employees (“players”) in attaining their quests.

So the idea of making other life goals into games, such as placing diet and fitness within a MMORPG framework, makes good sense. I agree with Thompson. Weight Watchers has something going there.

Learn How to Manage a Music Label with ‘Rise of the Band’

Here’s a different educational game, available as a free download from Trinity Western University. Label: Rise of the Band sends players on a quest to take an independent label to dominance by recruiting bands of different genres, venues, and making judicious budget choices. Read a write-up on the game and the story behind its development here. Download the game from its main site here.

Study: MMORPGs Critical in Developing Tomorrow's Business Leaders

One of the neat things about educational videogames is the vast multitude of angles the research can take. Whether it is military/industrial applications, classroom adaptations, or medical appropriations, videogames can be used and studied in a wide variety of educational settings. Matthew Kirdahy has a nice article over at Sify.com on how playing MMORPGs can lead to enhanced business skills. Kirdahy gives a nod to another article appearing in the May issue of Harvard Business Review that marks the culmination of considerable research on the topic.

The article’s authors, Byron Reeves (Stanford University), Thomas W. Malone (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Tony O’Driscoll (North Carolina State), found that leadership in online games offers a sneak preview of tomorrow’s business world. In fact, they said these games exhibit leadership abilities crucial to the future of business.

Here is the key paragraph from the HBR article regarding the sometimes serendipitous but always interesting findings:

A number of our conclusions about the future of business leadership were unanticipated. For one, individuals you’d never expect to identify—and who’d never expect to be identified—as “high potentials” for real-world management training end up taking on significant leadership roles in games. Even more provocative was our finding that successful leadership in online games has less to do with the attributes of individual leaders than with the game environment, as created by the developer and enhanced by the gamers themselves. Furthermore, some characteristics of that environment—for example, immediate compensation for successful completion of a project with nonmonetary incentives, such as points for commitment and game performance—represent more than mere foreshadowing of how leadership might evolve.

Fortunately, of the article’s authors, Dr. O’Driscoll (now at Duke) has blogged extensively about the research behind the paper. You can find his most recent entry regarding what resulted in the HBR product here. A thorough write-up, with lots of links to articles, podcasts and work leading up to the findings can be found here.

Harvard Business School is no stranger to publishing research on video gaming and business applications. Beck and Wade published Got Game way back in 2004.

References:
Beck, J. C., & Wade, M. (2004). Got game: How the gamer generation is reshaping business forever. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Kirdahy, M. (2008). How online videogames can help groom biz leaders. [Online]. Available: http://sify.com/finance/fullstory.php?id=14721468

Reeves, B., Malone, T. W., & O’Driscoll, T. (2008, May). Leadership’s online labs. Harvard Business Review. [Online]. Available: http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp;jsessionid=
3FGSKMZGNNJNSAKRGWDR5VQBKE0YIISW?ml_action=get-article&
articleID=R0805C&ml_page=1&ml_subscriber=true

The Top 5 Platforms for Creating Educational Video Games

Several games out there claim to be educational. Some are more or less so, depending on how one defines “educational.” The list of potential platforms for creating educational videogames is long. Many a fine game has been coded in a variant of BASIC or C, for instance. This list tends to focus on platforms for games created by university researchers and governmental organizations. In that regard, I make a value judgment by inferring that, in general, a game created by a governmental entity, a museum, or university personnel tends to be more “educational” than others.

Anyway, that’s my bias in creating this list. I’d love to hear additional ideas or justifications for inclusion regarding a platform I’ve left out.

1. Neverwinter Toolkit

Commentary: Many solid educational videogames have been developed to run on one of the iterations of Neverwinter Nights using the Aurora Neverwinter Toolkit. Many of these have been designed by teachers for their classrooms, and not released to the general public.
The game itself is completely modifiable, making it fairly easy to manipulate for desired educational outcomes. Teachers can insert dialogue, send students on quests to hunt for artifacts or other virtual ephemera, and set up pedagogical situations within the game. Although it’s a full 3-D virtual interactive environment (VIE), complete with anthropomorphically correct avatars, its runtime requirements are relatively light.

Example: Revolution continues to be the defining mod for Neverwinter Nights, showing what’s possible on the platform. Although it’s getting old (ca. 2004), Revolution continues to draw interest from academics and others.

Main Site: http://nwn.bioware.com/builders/

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2. Civilization III

Commentary: Professors and teachers have long been enamored with the idea of using games in the Civilization series for teaching history and social studies. Even better is the idea of modifying the game so that students can garner specific objectives. Nebulous concepts such as characteristics leading a people group toward dominance over their neighbors, as well as more concrete concepts such as locating settlements near water to help ensure success, are transmitted to players in the game. Modifying Civilization III is encouraged by its parent, Firaxis Games, with players urged to upload their maps and mods to the main site.

Example: The History Canada Game from Canada’s National Historical Society and The Historica Foundation shows how a country’s history can be explored through gaming.

Main Site: http://www.civ3.com/mods.cfm

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3. Flash

Commentary: When it comes to creating an educational game for a museum or government agency’s online site, Flash is the program of choice. As popular as it is, there are beaucoup sites with Flash games, some purporting to be educational. Unfortunately, many are very low on learning quotients, requiring little more than thoughtless arcade skills. On the other hand, many museums and governmental agencies have added excellent educational games to their sites that teach kids something, and promote the organizations’ goals at the same time.

Example: America’s CryptoKids is a collection of Flash games and activities from the US National Security Agency. The site shows how government and museum sites can create games in Flash to attract younger audiences online.

Main Site: http://www.adobe.com/

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4. Java

Commentary: If you’re going to make a serious game for the Web or other applications, and you don’t want to use Flash, then Java, the cross-platform language from Sun, remains an excellent choice. A major plus is the language is ideal for mobile phones and other devices, as well as for many types of computing platforms.

Example: The National Library of Virtual Manipulatives from Utah State University offers a variety of online Java applets designed to convey mathematical concepts. Originally funded with an NSF grant, the site now offers a CD version by mail.

Main Site: http://java.sun.com/

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5. XNA for the Xbox & Windows

Commentary: A relative newcomer to this group, Microsoft’s XNA is designed to create games for Windows and the Xbox. In a huge usage boost late last year, Microsoft released XNA free to universities and college students. According to their promotional department, over 300 universities worldwide have adopted XNA as a platform for teaching programming skills. Although it has only been freely available for a few months, look for this platform to become heavily used by universities to create educational games in the future.

Example: The XNA Creators’ Club has a role playing starter kit, Role-Playing Game, that allows developers to easily drop in content.

Main Site: http://www.xna.com/

Virtual Lemonade Stands Earn Real Money

Training for the epic flying mount skill in World of Warcraft costs 5000 gold. As I pursued this amount, mainly through cornering the auction house market on various primal cloths (at one brief point I was commanding prices of 95 gold each), I remarked to my wife how nice it would be to make money this easy in the real world.

So it was with interest I read that rather than toiling in RL this summer, some high school and college students are translating their virtual labor into real cash. The Wall Street Journal generated buzz with this article by Alexandra Alter about kids pursuing money making opportunities in games and online worlds rather than flipping burgers or some other typical summer job.

The key site for raking in the bucks, according to Alter, is Entropia Universe, where one teen profiled in the article claims to have earned $35,000 over four years, or about $730/month. Not bad coin.

In the real world, summer jobs are in short supply. Only about a third of teenagers are expected to work this summer, the lowest levels in 60 years, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. Summer youth employment has fallen from about 45% of teens in 2000, a downward trend made worse this year by the faltering economy.

But money-making opportunities in virtual worlds have grown as such sites go mainstream. Research firm Gartner Media estimates that by 2011, 80% of Internet users worldwide will have an avatar, making animated online personas as common as screen names. Such companies as IBM and Adidas have moved into Second Life, helping to drive employment.

The differences between Second Life and Entropia Universe appear to revolve around the need for heavier programming skills in SL. Skilled programmers can design virtual clothing or architecture in SL, for instance. In Entropia Universe, “crafted” items are in demand that involve time on the part of players to develop. These can then be sold to other players, much like “crafted” items in traditional MMORPGs. Activities like hunting, mining, and tailoring are offered in EU.

So, essentially, EU offers many of the activities a traditional MMORPG offers, with the possibility of earning real money from time and effort spent in the world. Users can add or withdraw real money, converting it into or from virtual funds through an ATM card.

Most of the research around the SL and EU economies seem to stem from marketing firms, although SL also has a strong history of academic interest.

References:

Alter, A. (2008, May 16). My virtual summer job. The Wall Street Journal. [Online.] Available: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121088619095596515.html

A Run on Virtual Banks in SL

The Wall Street Journal has taken note of the run on virtual banks in Second Life. In the old days, SL allowed free reign for most anything. Folks could set up virtual casinos. Banks could be operated by anyone, and deposits could earn interest. It was play money, but the play money was bought with real money.

Then came draconian American online gambling laws and the lawyers for SL corporate parent Linden Lab said it would be best to shut down the casinos. You see, even though it was play money, users spent real money buying the play money, and American law would likely not lend a kind ear to such arguments.

The banks struggled on for a while. There were fears of money laundering. Say a bad guy opened up a bank in SL and deposited ill gotten gain in the form of Linden dollars. Then his accomplice withdrew the play money and turned it into real money in another country. So now, Linden Lab has deemed that only banks in the real world can open a bank in SL. And so, folks who deposited money in the virtual banks want their money back, and some have closed.

Robert Bloomfield, a management prof over at Cornell gets a nice quote (“There is not a whole lot that is fake about this”). So does grad student Joshua Zarwel over at NYU, who actually runs, uh, ran, a virtual bank in SL. His bank, aptly named SL Bank, offered 24-30% interest on deposits, with about $25,000 deposited.

What’s fascinating is the opportunity for studying the simulations of real world behavior that can take place in virtual worlds. Researchers can follow the effects of mass virus outbreaks on populations, economic scares, and market theory. Human behavior remains the same, whether in a virtual world or the real world.

References:
Sidel, R. (2008, January 23). Cheer up, Ben: Your economy isn’t as bad as this one. The Wall Street Journal, p. A1.

Facebook Adds to Appeal with Zynga Game Network

There has been buzz before about the similarities of social networks and MMO videogames. Both involve interactive screen time. Both involve use of the Internet, cooperation, and social activities. Both have also been criticized for overuse and for a variety of public ailments.

So it comes as little surprise that social sites have taken steps to integrate videogames in an effort to provide members more reasons to stay online and spend time with one another. Brad Stone has a nice article in The New York Times this week on the efforts of the Zynga Game Network to create online games for Facebook. Facebook opened up its network to developers to create third party apps, to much success (the recent award “Blog of the Week” for this blog is linked to one such app, TopNetPix).

The games are simple and traditional, such as Texas hold ’em poker, blackjack, and Boggle. Members can play with their friends, and invite others to the game. Developers keep ad revenue, so both Facebook and Zynga profit from the increased interactivity on the site from videogames. Here’s the money quote:

“People already love to play casual games,” said Fred Wilson, a partner at the venture capital firm Union Square Ventures, which led a $10 million round of financing in Zynga. “But when you take a casual game and stick it inside a social network, it becomes way more exciting. This is like pouring gasoline on fire.”

The interactive nature of games and the idea of injecting a little fun into an activity appeals to serious game makers. I can see the notion of a team inside a virtual interactive environment (VIE) engaging in a game to help solve a learning objective as a viable possibility. At its simplest levels, math can be easily game-ified, or taught within the context of other games. For instance, a learner in a VIE could engage in a virtual card game and be taught the odds of drawing to a flush versus drawing to a straight. Likewise vocabulary building, spelling, and other lower level reading skills are all easily incorporated in videogames.

One such game that might have some small educational appeal on Facebook, Scrabulous, is under legal assault by Hasbro, owner of Scrabble.

References:
Associated Press. (2008, January 17). Makers of Scrabble target Facebook version of game. The Wall Street Journal, p.B4.

Stone, B. (2008, January 15). More than games, a net to snare social networkers. The New York Times. [Online.] Available: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/technology/15facebook.htm

CFP: Special Issue of Computer Graphics and Applications (CG&A)

Special Issue of IEEE CG&A, January/February 2009
Guest Editors Tiffany Barnes, L. Miguel Encarnação, and Chris Shaw
Submissions due: 30 July 2008
Author notification: 31 October 2008
Final versions due: 28 November 2008

Video games for entertainment have been pushing the boundaries of
graphics research and capabilities for the last 2 decades. More
recently, these technologies have been extended to include
interaction with and modification of data-driven, complex 3D
models, performed in real time on graphics processing units. As
this industry has become more mature, other applications of video
game technologies have become apparent for the purposes of
scientific simulation and visualization, industrial and military
training, medical and health training and education, geographic
information systems, as well as public awareness and policy
change. The models used in these serious game applications may
contain millions of 3D primitives from point sets to voxels, to
complex higher-dimensional data sets. The use of serious games for
education, decision-making, health, and training applications makes
the realistic, real-time representation of models and data through
geometry, appearance, illumination, visibility, and behavior
critically important.

Another significant set of problems concerns the representation and
animation of avatars and other life-like characters in a game, and
the interaction of the player with their own avatars as well as the
avatars of the other players. For training scenarios, a significant
challenge is the provision of artificially intelligent characters
for players to interact with. For persuasive applications, e.g. the
realism of the social behavior of the characters bears additional
importance. Characters must react to the player(s) in a way that
supports the application goals and is immediately and realistically
responsive.

Serious games require the real-time acquisition, processing, and
visualization of changing data sets at high bandwidth and low
latency, often with multiple simultaneous users. Rendering rates
and interaction in these games are ideally at or above 30-60 frames
per second. Advances that accelerate the management and
interaction of large data sets, including techniques based on
sample-based representation and rendering, polygon rasterization
and shader hardware, and ray tracing are important for serious
games, but the examination of the effects of these techniques on
fidelity for decision making and training is particularly salient.
Towards maximizing real-world training effects as well as making
game play a more ubiquitous aspect of everyday life, serious games
increasingly aim at bridging the real world behavior and the
virtual world performance of the player. The emergence of
sophisticated low-cost sensor technologies to monitor activities,
biometrics, geospatial location, proximity, and contextual
influences promises to greatly enhance players’ direct and indirect
interaction with games, and therefore has great potential to
improve their effectiveness. However, the richness of these new
modalities will also require a rethinking of the general
interaction paradigms commonly associated with video games in order
to draw maximum benefit from multimodal input capabilities.
This special issue seeks papers examining some of the latest
advances with respect to data representation, algorithms and data
structures, systems issues, and applications for serious games that
include real-time interaction with complex models. Topics of
interest include, but are not limited to:

· multi-player systems architectures,
· player-to-player coordination
· automated and semi-automated modeling techniques,
· compression and playback of simulation data,
· scripting and control of animated characters,
· training scenario planning & execution,
· human figure animation for training,
· intelligent characters,
· individual, group, and crowd behavior modeling and simulation,
· lighting, and relighting sampled models,
· representation and storage of large data sets,
· scalable parallel algorithms and architectures,
· rendering of complex and hybrid data sets,
· sampling and filtering for complex models,
· image- or sample-based representations,
· simplification and compression,
· visibility computations,
· data-driven procedural modeling,
· hardware for processing large data sets,
· data and resource management,
· configuration management and change control,
· delivery considerations (networking, system configuration),
· novel interaction techniques for massive data sets,
· sensor-based input and interaction technologies and
techniques, and
· systems and applications.

Articles should be no more than 10 magazine pages, where a page is
800 words and a quarter page image counts as 200 words. Cite only
the 12 most critical references, and consider providing technical
background in sidebars for nonexpert readers. Color images can be
interspersed through the article and should be limited to a total
of 10. Visit CG&A style and length guidelines online.
Please direct any correspondence prior to submission to one of the
guest editors:

Tiffany Barnes
Woodward 403E
Computer Science Department
UNC Charlotte
9201 University City Blvd.
Charlotte, NC 28223
tbarnes2 at uncc. edu

L. Miguel Encarnaçãcao
500 W Main St., HUM10
Innovation Center
Humana Inc.
lme at computer. org

Chris Shaw
13450 102 Ave.
Simon Fraser University Surrey
Surrey, BC, V3T 5X3
Canada
shaw at sfu. ca