How serious games help you work smarter

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1 1/ 5 How serious games help you work smarter Executive viewpoint Sandy Carter, Vice President, SOA, BPM & WebSphere Marketing, Strategy and Channels, talks about the serious side of gaming, business event processing and SOA, how social networking helps business, and ILOG s advantages in a tough economy. Read her commentary. They're not just for entertainment anymore Organizations today are looking to work smarter. They need business models designed for change and agility and that are capable of responding quickly to new connected customers. Companies also require business processes that can adapt to the global environment and can optimize delivery of key services and products through global markets sourcing. Serious games can help organizations work smarter by providing a broad understanding of business and organizational dynamics. Games acclimatize individuals to synthesize information real time and to collaborate in developing solutions. Games are not simply entertainment anymore; games are being used as teaching tools in government, academia and corporations. Serious games are being used to teach business skills, educate customers about products, train salespeople and business partners, and to bring new employees on board. Emerging cognitive research and demographic trends support games as the format of choice for developing skills through hands-on navigation of simulated scenarios in virtual environments. Advances in hardware, software and internet platforms are enabling the creation of serious games, which allow people to experience the value proposition of technologies underpinning business, education, medicine, social networking and much more. Business simulations or sims have the look and feel of a game, but correspond to non-game events or processes, such as business operations. Sims have been proven to accelerate the development of new skills. Serious games offer better learning because the learning is experiential, that is; you do it, you learn it. They offer continuous feedback and cooperative team learning in an inquiry-based authentic environment where players are motivated by rewards and new levels in order to achieve game goals. As part of President Obama s stimulus plan, organizations expect to see funding for projects around more efficient power grids, optimizing traffic flow on our roadways, and reducing waste in the United States food supply chain. But who will work on these projects? Universities are turning to serious games to find new ways to teach students more about business optimization, technology, and how to tackle some of these larger societal issues. A report titled Harnessing the Power of Videogames for Learning from the 2006 Summit on Educational Games by the Federation of American Scientists found that: "Students remember only 10 percent of what they read; 20 percent of what they hear; 30 percent if they see visuals related to what they hear; 50

2 2/ 5 percent if they watch someone do something while explaining it; but almost 90 percent if they do the job themselves, even if only as a simulation." Serious games represents a new and growing market with many business simulation games on the market or in development. INNOV8 Version 2.0 Nerve Center Serious Games Day on February 10 brings together industry and academia IBM is hosting the first Serious Games Day on Tuesday February 10 at its headquarters in Research Triangle Park (RTP), North Carolina. Game development is big business in North Carolina and is getting bigger. With more than 30 companies employing over 1,000 people, the greater Raleigh area is home to one of the largest concentrations of game development companies in the United States. In addition to nationally recognized game development studios, there are publishers, engine developers, serious game, simulation and advanced learning technology companies, as well as industry and trade associations for sharing best practices and opportunities. Local universities, colleges and private schools are training the next generation of game developers. The Serious Games Day event will feature panel discussions and demonstrations highlighting the emerging serious games industry in North Carolina through various company case studies and demos. New game technology together with Web 2.0 technology is creating many opportunities for enterprises, start-ups, governments, academia and the health sector. The event is attracting attendees from around the country, representing government agencies, businesses and universities. By differentiating serious games from virtual worlds and non-business simulations, the event emphasizes serious games as an effective tool for teaching and work enhancement, and as a vital supplement to existing educational and skill-building tools and methodologies for developing leaders and innovators. Serious games have inspired students to learn more about business and technology; and, as a result, students have gained marketable skills

3 3/ 5 that will make them more competitive in tackling global challenges in today s job marketplace. Switching to a different academic delivery mechanism like serious games can improve learning outcomes by 108%.¹ Raleigh companies engaged in serious games and advanced learning technologies include IBM, Cisco, Virtual Heroes, 3D Learning Solutions/Lockheed Martin, American Research Institute, Applied Research Associates, RTI Systems Modeling and Simulation, Destineer, ientertainment Network, Capstrat, and CenterLine. The North Carolina Advanced Learning Technologies Association (NC ALTA) is working to establish North Carolina as the leader in the development of advanced learning technologies. Participants at Serious Games Day will include regional business leaders in this new emerging field and academics from local universities including North Carolina State University, Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Wake Tech Community College. The latest serious games will be demonstrated, including IBM s INNOV8. Registration for the event is open at Screen shot from INNOV8 Version 2.0 IBM to announce new version of INNOV8 at Serious Games Day IBM is spearheading the growth of corporate serious games to help customers and employees work and invest smarter in an increasingly instrumented, interconnected and intelligent world. As interconnected technologies are changing the way the world literally works, better business intelligence and analytics are more crucial to track and monitor complex systems. By using dashboards linked to collaborative tools in serious games, managers learn how to pull data from the right sources at the right time to capture key real-time information about people, activities and outcomes. Business users learn to make more effective decisions in increasingly complex and changing business scenarios. Launched in November 2007, IBM s INNOV8 is an interactive, 3-D business simulator designed to teach the fundamentals of business process management and Service Oriented Architecture, and to bridge the gap in understanding between business leaders and IT teams in an organization. INNOV8 is an effective way for

4 4/ 5 tomorrow s job seekers to gain a competitive set of business and technology skills. IT labor research organization SkillPROOF states, in its "IT Labor Demand Research" report, January 2008, that SOA is a highdemand skill, and recommends that IT job seekers should focus on acquiring that skill to stay competitive. By launching serious games like INNOV8 and PowerUP, IBM is leveraging its multi-billion investment in visualization, interface, and artificial intelligence software solutions, and capitalizing on a new market for technology and human capital investments. Through its technology, IBM is already at the heart of gaming. IBM s gaming chips are in all of the new gaming consoles on the market. IBM s deep architectural and design experience with more than 50 years of server and technology leadership includes industry leading silicon processes and the early introduction of new technologies. Recently. IBM invested more than $2.5 billion to build the world's most technologically advanced chip manufacturing facility, a 140,000 square foot 300mm wafer processing Lab in East Fishkill, N.Y. IBM is using its technology leadership, engineering and design expertise to help create more ground-breaking and useful products. Building on INNOV8 s success and momentum, IBM will announce at Serious Games Day a new version of its 3D simulation game, available to new and current customers and members of the Academic Initiative. INNOV8 2.0 features new challenges, new characters and new puzzles to help students learn business process management in a gaming environment. It can expand their business skills and prepare them for new and emerging industries, from healthcare modernization to clean tech, and for jobs that may not even exist yet. In the first year of INNOV8 s launch, more than 100 universities worldwide have been piloting it as a business process management teaching tool, using the game to teach students how to optimize business efficiency. Professors using INNOV8 represent a mix of MBA, I.T., and undergraduate business programs. In INNOV8 won an Ava Gold Award. And in it received an Award of Merit from Society for New Communications Research and was an OMMA Awards finalist. It was also Datamation Product of the Year. Global Collaboration level of INNOV8 2.0

5 5/ 5 ¹R.R. Hake, Am. J. Phys. 66, (1998)