A new browser-based game attempts to teach students the ins and outs of debt management.

Debt Ski, launched in conjunction by mtvU and the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, was developed by Persuasive Games. The title has players guide a jet-ski riding swine—Piggy Banks—through a series of obstacles while charging them with managing Piggy’s savings and keeping him out of debt.

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation President and CEO Dave Walker explained to BusinessWorld the impetus for designing the educational games:

Young people, who are arguably the most important audience to reach these days when it comes to inspiring social change, are hard to reach through traditional media.

Last December GamePolitics reported on Pamoja Mtaani, a PC game developed through a partnership with Warner Bros. Interactive, North Carolina-based Virtual Heroes (creators of America's Army) and The Partnership For an HIV-free Generation.

The game's title translates to "Together in the Hood," and Pamoja Mtaani aims to help players learn skills to negotiate difficult issues such as crime and HIV in some of East Africa's most impoverished areas.

GP reader Wai Yen Tang dropped us a line to say that a video report on the game and how it is being used is now available on YouTube.

Texting while driving is increasingly understood to be a very dangerous activity.

Now, an online game published by the New York Times shows just how much a driver's reaction time is impacted by texting. Try the game here.

Via: OhMyGov!

It doesn't get much better than this.

The Illinois Soybean Association will unveil a game exhibit featuring Abe Lincoln and, of course, the soybean at its Farm Progress Show in Decatur next month.

The game, Think'n with Lincoln, celebrates the 200th birthday of the 16th president. Here a description from the press release:

One of the chief draws in the Farm Progress Show exhibit is the new "Think'n with Lincoln" game, a customized video game experience designed to entice visitors to answer trivia questions. Although soybean information is emphasized, Abraham Lincoln trivia is also included to tie in with the 200th birthday celebration and other Lincoln materials within the exhibit.

Positioned in one corner of the main tent, "Think'n with Lincoln" will be projected on a large, flat-panel television screen and is designed to allow up to three players to compete at a time. Each trivia question will appear on the screen with multiple-choice and true-false answers as "Abraham Lincoln" instructs participants, moderates the game and hands out prizes. Randy Duncan, an accomplished Abraham Lincoln impersonator, will act as game host and will encourage visitors to see the exhibits on display and play the game.

Can't make it to the farm show? Fear not. When the event is over, the game will remain available online.

It's a sad day when one of the web's most intelligent game-oriented sites rides off into the sunset.

And so it is with Water Cooler Games, operated since 2003 by Georgia Tech prof Ian Bogost and researcher Gonzalo Frasca. Both academics are also accomplished designers of provocative, issue-oriented games.

We note the following in the site's RSS feed this morning:

Water Cooler Games is now closed. Thanks for reading all these years. The site has been archived in full (with comments)... For my take on "videogames with an agenda," you might want to read Persuasive Games. I am now blogging at Bogost.com...

—Ian Bogost, August 2009

Because the issue-oriented focus of Water Cooler Games often intersected with that of GamePolitics, WCG was frequently cited here on GP. We will miss it, but it's good to know that it will live on in an archived version.

UPDATE: Ian Bogost has posted a lengthy commentary on the WCG closure:

From my perspective, the Water Cooler Games project was very much a success. The fact that so many venues now exist for discussing of what we coyly called "videogames with an agenda" speaks at least in part to the influence we exerted.

More so, the site had been immensely useful in helping me conduct research. My 2007 book Persuasive Games drew many examples from titles we covered on Water Cooler Games... 

 

Closing WCG opens up new opportunities for my writing, on this site and elsewhere... The truth is that I've said most of what I want to say about [political games, advertising and games, and other topics covered on WCG]...

GP: We wish Ian continued success and the best of luck going forward...

GameCulture reports on Card Checked, a Flash game created by Libertarian Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Relief.

When we last saw Norquist on the pages of GamePolitics he was speaking out in opposition to video game legislation in Utah. This time around, his game - set in a tattoo parlor - is meant to rally opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. GameCulture explains:

Card Check [is a] a majority sign-up policy that makes it easier for unions to get employer recognition. If at least 50% of employees sign a card authorizing representation, secret ballots can be bypassed. ATR says that "in the game, the player is a tattoo artist who faces several attempts by union organizers to get you to sign the card, including visiting you at home, vandalizing your car, threatening your cat, and even offering you marijuana."

As it turns out, labor leader Eddie Vale of the AFL-CIO took offense not only to the game's portrayal of union organizers as thugs, but to its game play as well:

As anyone who actually grew up playing Atari or Nintendo will know, calling this a video game is as accurate as their lies about the Employee Free Choice Act...

Norquist minion Brian Johnson wasted no time in firing back at Vale:

I'm not sure that a 1930s throwback like the AFL-CIO should be giving advice about what's cool. We're not sure what video games have been cranked out this year by the international brotherhood of video game programmers, but we'd be happy to stack our game up to any union-made product any day.

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a $100,000 grant to a Norfolk University history professor to develop a video game which tells the tale of the Underground Railroad.

Prof. Cassandra Newby-Alexander said that the history of the Underground Railroad, a network which helped slaves escape from the South in pre-Civil War days, is not well understood:

The underground Railroad was a much more complex issue than it's been made out. When you push a person to a point where they have nothing to lose, that's when you create a formidable enemy. Ultimately, human beings are going to be free.

When you ask people to describe the Underground Railroad, they think of Harriet Tubman on foot, with a gun. Most slaves didn't escape that way. I don't want to dumb-down the game.

Newby-Alexander is working with a local playwright to create a script for the game, which is expected for PC in 2011.

Via: Kotaku

Yesterday in the Big Apple, socially-aware teens held the first-ever NYC Youth Media & Technology Festival. The event spotlighted the work of teenagers who create video games and other digital media projects in order to advance social causes.

Organizers expected about 100 attendees for the Festival. The gathering was intended to produce a citywide dialogue about the role of new media and technology in teens' lives and how it can be utilized to promotes issues kids care about.

A group of young designers affiliated with the New York Public Library were scheduled to showcase their designs and conceptualizations for serious video games about subjects like celebrity drug use, media consolidation and genocide.

Meanwhile, teens from the Global Kids Virtual Video Project premiered an animated short film about child sex trafficking in the United States.  Members of MOUSE discussed their efforts to advance technology in New York City public schools by developing open source labs, advocating for the One Laptop Per Child campaign and other efforts.

The invitation-only event was held at the Parsons The New School for Design.

-Doug Buffone, Entertainment Consumers Association intern

The 5th annual Games For Health Conference formally kicks off tomorrow in Boston.

The conference, which runs through Friday, will feature a "Games Accessibility Day" today, devoted to examing way to make games playable by those with physical and cognitive disabilities.

The main conference agenda which begins on Thursday will feature more than 40 sessions:

Topics include exergaming, physical therapy, disease management, health behavior change, bio-feedback, epidemiology, training, cognitive exercise, nutrition and health education.

Somewhat lost in the pre-E3 buzz is the 6th Annual Games For Change Festival, currently underway in New York City.

The show has a terrific lineup of speakers, including Ian Bogost, Henry Jenkins, Clive Thompson, Lucy Bradshaw, N'Gai Croal, and James Paul Gee.

For updated G4C Festival news, check out the official Games For Change Twitter feed.

The Korean government will invest 80 billion won (US$63.52 million) to support the country's growing serious games business, reports Korea IT Times.

If successful, Korea will expand its serious games market by a factor of six by 2012. Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Yu In-chon commented:

The functional game market is at an early stage, but the market is an emerging blue ocean. The government is going to give support to prompt private investment in that field.

Mervyn Levin of the U.K.'s Serious Games Institute reports on a 2008 visit to Seoul where he observed some of the Korean serious game projects in development:

An interesting Korean Serious Games project was presented by T3 Entertainment on anti-bullying, a subject of obvious relevance to the UK. The title was "Online 'Star Stone' Development for Improvement of Personal Relations".

South Korean University research was also presented demonstrating evidence of the relationship between on-line games and the development of leadership skills in the workplace...

Via: gamesindustry.biz

With all of the hype about Swine Flu lately, Ian Bogost points out that his Persuasive Games studio partnered with Traffic Games of Scotland a few months back to create Killer Flu.

The game, built at the request of the UK Clinical Virology Network, teaches players lessons about how seasonal and pandemic influenza spread:

While our game focuses on an avian flu pandemic, the same principles apply to the present situation. The players of the game will find it more difficult than they suspect to create the pandemic the news would have us believe is imminent...

Via: Gamasutra

British political figure Lord Puttnam wants people to know about global warming, and he wants video games to help teach them.

As reported by Edge Online, Puttnam, who is also a film producer, issued a press release promoting the nexus of games and climate change education:

Serious games based upon real-life geography should be vital tools in our fight against climate change. Educating people about the impact of prolonged changes to our climate in an accessible way is the best catalyst for action I know.‭

Lord Puttnam previously chaired‭ ‬the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Draft Climate Change Bill and is the founding Chair‭ ‬of the National Endowment for Science,‭ ‬Technology and the Arts.

He also delivered the closing keynote at last September's Handheld Learning 2008 conference in London.

As we saw in 2008 with Breakthrough's immigration rights-themed I.C.E.D!, non-profits are increasingly turning to game tech to reach a wider - and younger - audience.

Along that line Ars Technica reports that Games for Change has released a toolkit designed to help non-profits tap learn how to tap into issue-oriented games of their own.

The Games for Change Toolkit is primarily a Flash-based presentation containing video, reference material, and links to demonstration games that cover various aspects of game design, from the initial concept to production and distribution. While an actual [software development kit] may not be involved, the toolkit introduces nonprofit organizations to both the broad potential and finer details of bringing an issue-conscious game into reality...

The Toolkit covers seven primary topics and introduces each with a video snippet of their relative presenter's speech: Urge, Concept, Design, Production, Distribution, Evaluation, and Case Study...

At the Georgia Tech News Games Project, Ian Bogost discusses Raid Gaza!, an editorial game dealing with Israel's offensive against Hamas in Palestine.

Raid Gaza! is hosted at Newgrounds and has an RTS-like interface in which the player, acting as the Israeli side, builds structures and uses them to create military units which are then launched against the Palestinians.

Of the game, Bogost writes:

The game argues against the justification of Israeli attacks on Gaza, representing them as unprovoked and characterizing Israel's response as overt aggression. The game's goal is to kill as many Palestinians as possible in a three minute session...

The game is headstrong, suffering somewhat from its one-sided treatment of the issue at hand. But as an editorial, it is a fairly effective one both as opinion text and as game... It's release on user-contributed animation and games portal Newgrounds came on 30 December 2008, only three days after the Israeli Defense Forces launched airstrikes...

Raid Gaza! was probably not created by a journalist nor a professional game developer (it was submitted to Newgrounds eponymously). Still, the piece was timely, coherent, and exerted commentary that is appreciable, even if it is not profound...

It's always great to see game tech being to put to use for purposes larger than mere entertainment.

Variety's Cut Scene blog reports that Warner Bros. Interactive will launch a free online game in Kenya designed to teach players about the risks of AIDS as well as how to prevent the spread of the disease.

The five-player game is called Pamoja Mtaani, which translates to Together in the Hood. It will target youth centers in Nairobi and features tunes from local hip-hop musicians. Pamoja Mtaani was developed by North Carolina-based Virtual Heroes, creators of America's Army.

Here's how Warner Bros. describes the game: 

[Pamoja Mtaani] follows five strangers who are brought together through unforeseen circumstances, losing what is most precious to each of them. Working their way through various East African neighborhoods, players must recover the stolen items and help an injured woman on their quest. Along the way, they will experience barriers and facilitators to behavior change through a variety of missions and mini-games.

Pamoja Mtaani is an outgrowth of The Partnership For an HIV-free Generation.

Virtual Peace, a simulation project underway at Duke University, uses game technology to train users in diplomacy and crisis response skills.

Prof. Tim Lenoir is leading the interdisciplinary project, which, ironically, has received assistance from Virtual Heroes, the North Carolina developer best known for its work on the America's Army recruiting game. Lenoir commented:

We’re trying to train people how to collaborate in groups -- particularly in internationally sensitive situations. The goal is to create an environment where people can practice their negotiation skills -- and it’s a whole lot better use of the gaming engine than shooting ’em up.

Players in the game assume the roles of various crisis response organizations such as Oxfam, UNICEF, Doctors Without Borders and the World Health Organization.

The British Minister of State for Science and Innovation, Lord Drayson (left), endorsed the work of the Serious Games Institute during a visit last week to SGI, which is located at England's Coventry University.

A University press release reports:

During his visit Lord Drayson... learnt about the use of virtual worlds and simulation games to train doctors and clinicians in a variety of applications including triage and serious injury trauma.

Drayson, who resigned from a previous cabinet post to pursue an auto racing career, commented:

The Serious Games Institute is leading the way in this exciting emerging technology. The projects here are truly inspirational and crucially, underpinned by excellent research. They will have real impact in our everyday lives over the next few years.

 

This work goes to show that science and technology is all around us. By studying science subjects at school young people could have access to all sorts of cool and interesting jobs. There are exciting new businesses in this field. Here is a sector that is growing fast despite the downturn and offers great job opportunities for physics and maths graduates.

Gene Koo of Valuable Games live-blogs an appearance by serious games guru Ian Bogost (left) at a Harvard study group led by Nicco Mele:

Video games [serve] as a centrifying values issue, making it very cheap [for politicians] to decry video games. Ian mentions the ECA (Entertainment Consumers Association), and the idea of a union of video game players, or a common identity among gamers, “weirds” him out.

Gamer demographics — if there are political games, whom will they reach?: There’s a lot of bad data, but… see the Entertainment Software Association. The better question is to break them down by style/type. Ian’s own games — TSA game since 2006 has approached 50M plays. (< $10K to build).

An Obama game could really sell. Who wouldn’t buy an Obama game? Well...

So what about an abortion game that attempts to help each side understand the perspective of the other side of the debate? ...

Nicco mentions that the [Howard] Dean [2004] campaign’s game did inspire people to donate, get involved. Ian wonders if this idea will “peak” (novelty factor).

The problem is that the vast majority of these [political] games are meaningless tripe. See Ian’s discussion of Pork Invaders, in the Gamasutra article, and also the contrast with Tax Invaders as a rhetorical device.

FULL DISCLOSURE DEPT: The ECA is the parent company of GamePolitics.

The United Nations Population Fund has awarded Champlain College's Emergent Media Center a $600,000 grant to develop an interactive game aimed at preventing violence against women in developing nations. The target audience for the game will be young boys and the game will be rolled out in South Africa initially.

Toward that end, a group faculty and students from Champlain visited Cape Town in August. For more information, check out the Emergent Media Center's blog or join its Facebook group