A Must See at IBM Interconnect -- Our Serious Games for Real Companies including MindCraft, Unity, and more!
A few years ago I started IBM's gaming movement -- Serious Games -- through a Bschool pitch competition with a young student at the time that has really impacted IBM and the industry on Gaming -- Phaedra!
We are showcasing all our gaming work at IBM Interconnect and you will NOT want to miss it!
IBM is leveling up on systems of engagement via the Intersection of Cognitive Computing and Games.
We all know that we live in an attention economy and it is critical that we develop applications that are engaging with a focus on people centric-design. Well, at this year's InterConnect we will be showcasing serious games projects that were built on our game development ecosystem. Come by our dev@ arcade to play the serious games yourself and meet their creators. For those that do not know, Serious games are when you use games to do more than entertain. OUR serious games intersect the world of games with cognitive computing. At the arcade we will be showing off a patient engagement app called Mevi, a Cyberdefense strategy game, and The Suspect, a game that uses behavioral insights to get into the mind of a murder suspect...
We are Out-Thinking Old School! At InterConnect we will be unveiling a very special project of ours that we did with a high school for disadvantaged teens in Austin, Texas. The students at Connally high school modded Minecraft so that you are flying nanobots through a human body. We helped them integrate their entire experience with Watson to explore the treatments of different diseases. We call it Medical Minecraft. On Day 3 Mainstage at the show, the very special teacher David Conover and our very own Global Lead for Serious Games Phaedra Boinodiris will be telling you about the project. We are helping the US Dept of Education with their EdSim challenge to enable developers to create new serious games like this one to be formally integrated into the public school system. If this high school can do it, your enterprise can do it! Its that simple. Get your sneak peek here.
But wait, there is more!! You cannot miss the cognitive game design lab, our Unity 3D lab showing how to introduce Watson Tradeoff Analytics into a strategy game, our lightning talk, and several panels about Cognitive Games and Education. Have an interest in corporate learning, cultural transformation, employee engagement, customer retention, strategic optimization? Come by the Expo Hall and meet our serious games team, or follow them on Twitter @Innov8game."
You are never too old to boogie board -- or to social network!
In my summer vacation series, here's my next lesson from the beach!
I got to use my boogie board to surf the waves and the wave pool! What I learned is that you are never too old to boogie!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roQxFb0B9Pw]
Just like you are never too old or too high in a company to use social networking. The fastest growing group on Facebook are those over the age of 55! Did you know that 32% of top CEOs have at least one account on a social network! The % of CIOs who say that social is important to their business has more than doubled in the last year per the MIT Sloan Management Review.
What are you waiting for? Catch the wave and boogie!
Marriott starts a new social media game born from ideation!
I love social media and especially the concept of Social Gaming. 63% of the US population now plays video games and this number is significantly higher in Asia. The average age of the gamer is 35 years old, 40% women, and half of them play games online one or more hours per week.
I was intrigued by the new game that the Marriott corporation just released! It's called XplorSM . A cool thing about this game is that it was conceived by a group of Marriott employees from various departments, age groups and levels across the company. Talk about ideation! The team was lead by David A. Rodriguez who is the Executive Vice President & Chief Human Resources Officer at Marriott and a true innovator!
OK! So the game helps you to visit New York City, Paris, Beijing, Dubai and Sao Paolo and win Marriott Rewards points along the way. And it helps when if you are like me, and find yourself sitting in airports waiting for a flight or lounging by the pool and looking for something to do.
XPLOR can be played on a coast to coast or intercontinental flight without an Internet connection once it's downloaded. This is a key feature since most travelers and emerging consumers and employees, even if they have web connections, find it can get very expensive in international cities to connect.
The game is more like Call of Duty and other major adventure and sports game titles like Madden Football or Major League Baseball, and less like Angry Birds or Tetris where there is just one background and things moving around in the foreground. Just in the character creation area (before you start playing), there are several million possible combinations.
Download the game free and start travelling!: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/xplor-by-marriott/id646951347?ls=1&mt=8:
I cannot wait to continue exploring! And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this game!!!
Gaming as part of Marketing 2.0?!#
Playing Video Games Isn’t a Waste of Time, After All
This past holiday season, parents who buy Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3, Nintendo Co.'s Wii, Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 or the latest online game need not feel guilty. Turns out that young people – and adults – aren’t wasting time when they’re playing video games. We got the Wii!!!
Whether they’re tapping away on video game controllers or the keys of their computers in increasingly popular online games, today’s game players are acquiring the skills that companies increasingly value as the gaming generation enters the workforce.
In fact, the skills needed to succeed in gaming can help young people “to be more sociable, develop strategic thinking and become better leaders in life,” according to a book, “The Kids are Alright: How the Gamer Generation is Changing the Workplace.” The authors, John C. Beck and Mitchell Wade, say that games “deserve” a role in helping young people grow into adults because they require them to use different mental and social skills, often simultaneously.
With that in mind, thousands of universities around the world now have access to Innov8, IBM's new "serious game," available at no charge. We developed the game to help university students and young professionals develop a combination of business and information IT skills, important attributes needed to compete in a global economy.
Over the past two decades, IT professionals have had to break out of their comfort with proprietary systems as the industry moved to client-server computing and then to open computing. Today’s move to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is asking both IT and line of business professionals to acquire cross-over skills in each other’s domains. That’s why the game stresses learning activities that combine IT acumen with business skills.
Much like pilots who use flight simulators to learn how to fly airplanes, students of IT management studies who grew up playing video games can benefit from engaging in learning activities in the way they like to learn.
By interacting with the video game, students can make decisions about real-life business situations, such as re-designing a call center process. They can see the results of their decisions right away, and if they make a mistake, it’s much more private than “failing” in front of a classroom of their colleagues. Because a love of gaming is shared around the world, professors have told us the game can help to bridge cultural barriers.
The trend is spreading.
According to The Apply Group, a marketing consultant, at least 100 of the Global Fortune 500 will use gaming to educate their employees by 2012, with the United States, United Kingdom and Germany leading the way.
While it’s too soon to measure the full implications, there’s a new business environment emerging. If hundreds of thousands of players organize themselves to successfully complete specific endeavors during their “play” time, will they be content during work hours in organizational structures used since the Industrial Revolution, with central command and control? Chances are they’re more likely to want to work on virtual teams distributed around the world, undertaking multiple endeavors, taking advantage of the thought processes that succeeded for them in online gaming.
As employers, we cannot ignore the changing group dynamics. In fact, we should tap into the most innovative ideas to redefine the fundamental nature of computing. Just as games present us with situations that invite players to make choices, consider the advantage of using graphics and decision-making steps of games in business. Supply chain software and customer relationship software could allow decision makers to immerse themselves in the real-world simulations, judging cause and effect before making decisions.
The possibilities are huge -- and not just for business.
The application of serious gaming techniques in science, medicine and other industries could help us solve some of the world's biggest challenges.
The term “serious gaming” no longer is an oxymoron. Not just competition for employees’ attention, there’s endless opportunity if we harness the power of games to get work done.
Who else is going Gaming? Check out what we are doing!