The Serious Games Showcase and Challenge has announced this year's winners. Four games were awarded while another 8 were worthy finalists. But first, here's what this contest is all about, and some information about next year's event.
The goal of Serious Games Showcase & Challenge is to identify innovative game-based technologies and solutions that improve training across all segments for individuals, groups and systems.
Get Serious, Get Recognized!
Submit your original serious games entry and have your work reviewed by a panel of military, academia and industry gaming experts. Finalists will be showcased, and winners announced, at I/ITSEC 2009 in Orlando, Florida.
The best game award went to Burn Center, a "fast-paced, medically-accurate simulation of mass-scale casualty burn treatment" which probably isn't for the faint of heart. Other interesting entries include an ecologic, war-free take on the Age of Empires series, Age of Ecology, and a firefighters training simulator, Flame-Sim.
The subject of serious games is always interesting, a notable example being the often controversial "recruitment tool" America's Army, so it's great to see it get more attention from such institutions, and that a confirmation that next year's awards are also planned already.
Hopefully, next year they'll perhaps do a better job of promoting the submitted software and actually link to some of the available for download entries, if any are, so that we don't have to frantically search via google, as I've been doing without much of a result. of course, I'm just being bitter because I wanted to try some of the more obscure entries.
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