Serious Games

The term "serious games" is often used to refer to educational games in order to distinguish them from games which are designed for entertainment purposes only. Typically serious games are games used for in corporate training environments. The Serious Games Initiative works to organize and accelerate the adoption of computer games for a variety of management and leadership challenges facing the public sector. Part of its overall charter is to help forge productive links between the electronic game industry and projects involving the use of games in education, training, health, and public policy. The links below show examples of serious games used in a variety of settings.

Military Games

US Army

• America's Army (recruiting) - http://www.americasarmy.com
• Full Spectrum Warrior (training) wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Spectrum_Warrior

US Air Force

• USAF: Air Dominance
• Operation Flashpoint

• Kuma\War (Kuma Reality Games)
• Close Combat: First to Fight (U.S. Marines) originally a simulation to study the effect of morale on soldiers
• Navy Training Exercise: Strike and Retrieve (U.S. Navy)
• Raid over Moscow (U.S. Gold)
• Counter-Strike (Valve)

Propaganda games

• Special Force (Hezbollah)
• Under Ash (Dar al-Fikr)
• Ethnic Cleansing (Resistance Records)
• White Law (Resistance Records)

Games encouraging non-violent conflict solutions

• Food Force (United Nations)
• Foreign Ground (Swedish National Defence College)
• PeaceMaker (Carnegie Mellon University concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict)

Win the election - www.ciconline.og/elections (notice the digging deeper segments)

Intel IT manager game - itmg2.intel.com/eng (you need a username and password for this game) how did you act when the "boss" called you into his office? What was the most stressful aspect of this game?

• www.corporateinternetgames.com Corporate Internet Games (a/k/a Corporate Adrenalin)
• www.games2train.com Games2train
• www.thiagi.com/ Games by Thiagi
• www.houdini.se Houdini Digital Creations (Stockholm, Sweden)
• www.kar2ouche.com/ Immersive Education Ltd (Kar2ouche Role Playing Software)
• www.imparta.com/ Imparta (UK)
• www.learningware.com/ Learningware
• www.lightspan.com/ The Lightspan Partnership
• www.lucaslearning.com/ Lucas Learning
• www.mak.com/ MaK Technologies
• www.mbagames.com/ MBA Games
• www.managementpossible.com/ Management Possible
• www.montecristogames.com Monte Cristo
• www.ninthhouse.com/ Ninth House Networks
• www.simulearn.net/ SimuLearn
• www.telebeans.com/ TeleBeans
• www.objection.com/ Transmedia
• www.visualpurple.com/ Visual Purple
• www.willinteractive.com/ Will Interactive
• http://monkeywrench.think3.com/ Think3
• www.cognitoy.com Cognitoy
• www.stagecast.com/ StageCast
• www.riverdeep.net/learningcompany/ Learning Company
• www.scholastic.com Scholastic
• www.virtual-u.org Virtual U
• http://www.apple.com/games/articles/2003/12/toysight/ - iSight Games

Alternate Reality Games

Educational Blogs