Saving Lives with Simulations

Soon emergency medical technicians and firefighters may be able to practice responding to terrorist attacks using a virtual reality training tool under development at the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories.

In the emergencies of tomorrow -- when rescue personnel may need to triage and treat mass casualties following release of a nerve agent in a shopping mall, theme park, or subway, for instance -- there will be no second chances. Rescuers who become victims of a terrorist attack can't save lives.

BioSimMER is a VR application that immerses first responders in a 3-D computer-simulated setting -- a small airport in which a biological warfare agent has been dispersed following a terrorist bombing. Simulated casualties with a variety of symptoms are found throughout the airport.

The computer simulation engages the rescuer's eyes, ears, and decision-making abilities through goggles that display the scene's images. The rescuer wears sensors on the arms, legs, and waist, allowing the player's motions to be fed back into the simulation.

"With virtual reality, you can practice over and over again, like in a video game," says project leader Sharon Stansfield. "You make mistakes, you learn. If someone dies, you can hit the reset button."

Click here to read the full article

Chief Learning Officer / The Videogame Generation

Did you see last week's Chief Learning Officer magazine’s Executive Briefing newsletter?

They ran a full story on “Gamimg and Simulations”, which highlights some of
BrandGames’ recent accomplishments.

Read and enjoy!

July 20, 2005 Volume 3, Issue 29
Executive Briefing:
Kellye Whitney, Associate Editor Gaming in Simulations Not Child’s Play
If you've been thinking seriously about investing in simulations to round out your learning and development offerings, you're not alone. More and more companies are enjoying the benefits of this realistic learning tool, and are taking advantage of the gaming quality in many new products to appeal to younger employees.

Click here to read the full article

Please visit www.brandgames.com/learning for client case studies.

Regards,

Jim Wexler
EVP, Marketing
212-780-0140 x203

Think you're better than Bush?

“The Most Serene Republic of Anstar is a tiny, socially progressive nation, renowned for its absence of drug laws. Its hard-nosed, hard-working, intelligent population of 5 million enjoy extensive civil freedoms, particularly in social issues, while business tends to be more regulated. The medium-sized, liberal government is mainly concerned with Social Welfare, although Healthcare and Education are secondary priorities.”

What? You never heard of the Republic of Anstar?

Don’t worry – you’re not lacking on your knowledge of world nations, but you probably are missing out on one of the web’s hottest sites: www.nationstates.net.

NationStates is a world political simulation that allows you to easily create your own country and decide how it will be run. During registration, you pick your country's name, flag, national animal, political style, and other basic features. NationStates then asks you to address one political issue each day – new laws take effect over night – and you can see how you rank as a political leader.

Laid-back liberal democracy or oppressive dictatorship? The choices are all yours.

Videogame Generation: Top Score wins....a JOB

On a sunny Saturday in Bangalore, India, a group of engineers and mathematicians, all in their 20's, sit hunched over computers, frantically writing code. Sounds like a ton of fun, right?

It's the Google India Code Jam, a contest to find the most brilliant computer coder in South and Southeast Asia. The fastest programmer wins $7,000 and a chance at a coveted job at one of Google's research and development centers.

14,000 students registered from all over the region and 50 were selected for the finals in Bangalore. The finalists are given the task of creating and testing software for unique web searches and of getting from point A to point B in a city with a minimum number of turns.

The final challenge is to program a war-based board game, a task so complex that only the winner, Ardian Poernomo, a student from Singapore, is able to complete it.

"It's a dog-eat-dog world," says Robert Hughes, president of TopCoder Inc, the testing company that runs the Code Jams. "Wherever the best talent is, Google wants them."

Check out info about the Code Jam and even try a sample problem!
http://www.topcoder.com/pl/?&module=Static&d1=gicj05&d2=overview

Virtual Surgery: This Won't Hurt a Bit

Ever dream of a career in medicine? Now you can live the dream... on your Nintendo.

Trauma Center: Under the Knife is a hospital simulation game in which you are a young upstart doctor who must prove his mettle at a high tech hospital. From simple surgeries like sewing up a motorcyclist’s arm, to more advanced tumor removal, Trauma Center offers wannabe doctors a wide array of surgical applications.

In this high-tech occupational simulation, if you don't follow the procedures fast enough, you lose the patient. You must quickly follow a set of steps involving selecting the right tool in the right order and then using it. For the first couple of surgeries, your nurse will guide you through, but after that, you are mostly on your own. You are timed during every operation and graded afterward.

About the gory graphics... if you can't stand the heat stay out of the (virtual) OR.

For screen-shots and videos from the game, check out: http://ds.ign.com/objects/695/695152.html

Business Week: On the Job Gaming

Training Videogames are gaining popularity among major industry players, Business Week reports this week. Cold Stone Creamery Cold Stone Creamery recently commissioned a new videogame that they will use to help train their employees. The game teaches portion control and customer service in a cartoon-like simulation of a Cold Stone store. Players scoop cones against the clock and try to avoid serving too much ice cream. The company says more than 8,000 employees, or about 30% of the total, voluntarily downloaded the game in the first week. “It’s so much fun,” says 24-year-old Cold Stone employee Laura Holshouser.

The military has used video games as a training tool since the 1980s and now the practice is catching on with companies, too, ranging from Cold Stone to Cisco to Canon. Corporate trainers are betting that games’ interactivity and fun will hook young, media-savvy employees and help them grasp and retain sales, technical, and management skills.

The market for corporate training games is small but growing fast. Industry leaders estimate that such games make up 15% of the “serious” or nonentertainment market, which also includes educational and medical training products. Five-year estimates show the market for serious games more than doubling, to $100 million, with trainers accounting for nearly a third of that.
Companies like video games because they are cost effective. Instead of paying for someone to fly to a central training campus you can just put them in front of a computer. Plus, employees often play the games at home on their own time.

Games are especially well-suited to training technicians. In one used by Canon, repairmen must drag and drop parts into the right spot on a copier. Workers who played the game showed a 5% to 8% improvement in their training scores compared with older training techniques such as manuals.Please see the current Business Week for the full story.

Wall St. Journal: M.B.A. Recruiters Turn to Games

August 8, 2006

Wall St. Journal Career Journal reports that M.B.A. Recruiters are using games in a variety of ways to differentiate themselves with top MBA talent:

Getting a good job often requires a bit of gamesmanship. But for some M.B.A.students, landing a new position is all about playing games. As the battle for top talent intensifies, the games help companies stand out in the crowded campus-recruiting field and spot promising candidates. Through the business-simulation games, they can see students in action, demonstrating creativity, tactical thinking, teamwork and persuasion skills.

L'Oréal, Booz Allen Hamilton, Procter & Gamble, and other companies are encouraging more students to play strategy competitions that just might lead to a job offer.

Some are using videogames and digital business simulations to engage next generation prospects. Others rely on live events to attract candidates. The games, which are typically played at least partly online, change from year to year.

-- Procter & Gamble's Just-in-Case competition, for instance, has focused on its Olay and Swiffer brands and challenged players to identify the next company P&G should acquire.
"Students see these games as more fun and engaging than the usual company information sessions and receptions," says Steve Pollock, president of WetFeet Inc., a recruiting consulting firm in San Francisco.

The games enable companies to reach out to many more campuses than recruiters could ever visit. For example, L'Oréal's e-Strat Challenge marketing game attracted almost 40,000 students from 1,000 schools in 125 countries this year.

In e-Strat, student teams run a virtual cosmetics company and must make dozens of decisions as they manage new brands, Web sites, distribution channels, advertising budgets, and research and development. In the end, finalists travel to L'Oréal's Paris headquarters to defend their business plans before a panel of judges. In addition to a possible job offer, winners receive a trip to the destination of their choice.While companies insist that performing well in their games isn't a prerequisite for employment, students certainly could spoil their chances if they bomb out. Some students and school officials are concerned that the games require too much time and might interfere with class assignments. "But if you're really serious about working for a company," Mr. Pollock says, "there's a feeling that you'd better participate."-- In Merrill Lynch's business simulation videogame, college students participate in virtual client engagements that let them experience what it is like to work in investment banking at Merrill Lynch before meeting with the firm. Merrill recruiting execs want applicants to have an understanding of how the investment banking business works. --Booz Allen's CEO Challenge invites prospects to an event. The consulting firm stages the three-day competition about six times each year, picking just 30 M.B.A. students to play. During the CEO Challenge, student teams slip into the executive roles at an electronics company and react to news that a competitor is rolling out a hot new portable music device six months ahead of schedule.

"It's not a recruiting event per se, but people from the CEO Challenge usually do very well in job interviews," says Daniel Oriesek, head of Booz Allen's European campus recruiting. He estimates the firm hires about 10% of the players.

As more recruiters get into gaming, it will become less distinctive. But for now, companies believe their contests enhance their reputations.

Tapping The Gamer Brain

Academics, politicians, lawyers, psychologists, and marketers are beginning to recognize a vast untapped resource: the wisdom of gamers.

A new videogame, created in part for the Government Accountability Office and due out next year, uses online "cards" to help players balance the U.S. budget - like Pokemon for bureaucrats. The hope is that players will learn more about big government and vice versa.
"We're really interested in what happens when you throw a lot of brain-power at complex issues like this," says David Rejeski, director of the Serious Games Initiative.

The largest online games are home to millions of joystick-toting problem solvers. What if you asked them to take on problems bigger than, say, killing orks? At a 2004 conference, Sony's Raphael Koster challenged programmers to leverage players' knowledge to find intelligent life in space. Stanford's Byron Reeves, using video clips of medical samples, had players of Star Wars Galaxies diagnose cancer to advance their standings as "doctors." After 20 hours of training, players got it right 60% as often as a pathologist; 35 of the best players, on average, actually beat the pro.

The Wisdom of Crowds author James Surowiecki perks up at the notion of getting gamers to solve complex problems. "Games are an entertaining way to get people to do labor for you," he says. And gamers, coming from diverse backgrounds, can spark unconventional solutions. "There are certain fundamental assumptions that experts agree upon," Surowiecki says. "Amateurs or outsiders don't have those assumptions."

Of course, tapping this talent requires motivating them to participate. "You've got to have something that connects to people's lives in an imaginative way," says Henry Jenkins, director of MIT's Comparative Media Studies program. While best-selling games such as SimCity and Railroad Tycoon simulate real-world environments, a game about drilling for oil or predicting the weather would have to be far more sophisticated, perhaps integrating real-world data in real time. "It's an exciting idea," says Jenkins. "Technically, it's doable, but no one has done it yet."

From Fast Company

Simulations On the Nascar Circuit

The first time Regan Smith raced around Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, the Mexico City road course for Nascar's second-tier Busch Series race today, he knew every bump and turn on the 2.5-mile circuit. He knew the line he wanted to drive and knew where to shift and when to push it even before his first practice lap.

How did he know? He had raced an exact model of the track on a video game. But for Smith, it was not merely a game. The rookie Nextel Cup driver is one of several young competitors who are turning to simulated racing for practice and preparation for real races.

"Everybody's doing everything we can to be better," Smith said at his office before the season. "It's so competitive now that those extra laps might be the difference in qualifying 35th or qualifying 10th."

Denny Hamlin, the 2006 Nextel Cup rookie of the year, credited Sim racing at least partly for his first victory, at Pocono Raceway last June.

"Obviously, it helped him and he put a lot of weight on it," said Mike Ford, Hamlin's crew chief. "I like videogames as well. I think the biggest thing in the videogames, you learn patience. Because the videogames - you can get in trouble a lot quicker than you can on the racetrack." Of course, crashing in a sim is not nearly as costly as in a real race.

Many drivers own sophisticated Sim racing units that cost thousands of dollars and are designed to mimic the feel of real racecars. The setup in Smith's office is surrounded by a metal frame. It contains a racecar seat that faces a 42-inch flat-screen computer monitor. The steering wheel pops in and out, as it does in a real racecar. The unit also has a stick shift and gas, clutch and brake pedals that can be adjusted to match the tension of those in Smith's racecar.

Other Sim racing units feature three-panel displays that offer a three-dimensional 90-degree view.

No matter how sophisticated the unit, all agree that there is only one computer program that is accurate and realistic enough to use for real race practice. The Nascar Racing 2003 computer game by Papyrus has every Cup racetrack from that season and allows players to make detailed adjustments in tire pressure, camber, shocks, and springs. The program simulates such realistic concerns as tire wear and the loose and tight handling of a racecar.

For the full story, please see The New York Times.