Well, this is an interesting idea.

In the early 1990s, one of the most interesting companies around was iWerks, which was led by a group of former Disney theme park ride engineers. iWerks pioneered the idea of motion capture rides — the “Star Tours”-like experiences that have you sit before a large screen in a contraption that moves in synchronicity with the moving images on the screen. At their best, these “rides” (I hesitate to call them rides, because in reality you’re barely moving from one spot) created a powerful illusion of motion and activity.

Now, combine that experience with the free-form nature of a game - where in essence you direct the movements — and you’ve got a powerful entertainment experience. Perhaps this becomes one of the first breakout uses of NextGen technology beyond the console?

The Cell processor documentation was released to the public early this morning. It includes the architecture specification, SPE instruction set specification, and the SPE C/C++ language extensions. Unlike console processors of the past, where this information was kept closed, Sony Toshiba and IBM have decided to make this information public. IBM’s Irving Wladawsky-Berger posted a message in his blog on why he believes this release is significant to the industry.

All you high performance programmers out there start licking your chops, it’s feeding time!

Interesting project kicking off in Japan:

3D HDTV

This would make watching TV a lot more like playing a video game.
Feeding such a device would require a huge amount of real-time processing to reconstruct the 3D scenes on the capture and delivery side. Once the data has been received by the viewing device I don’t think it would be a very difficult to render. In fact I think the PS3 could handle such a task given enough network bandwidth.

Recently IBM hosted its first interactive MMOG web broadcast (free registration required), where industry leaders discussed the future of MMOG, live from Paris, London, Los Angeles, Austin and San Diego. A blog was also created to prolong the conversation started during the event — a conversation we now hope will continue here on Game Tomorrow. Here’s how the conversation flowed, and questions asked and answered during that Web broadcast: (more…)

Games Impact Across Industry and Society

Typically, when we hear the term game we think of the entertainment aspect of the media as opposed to the societal and industrial impact of games. As games become more popular in our private and personal lives we are seeing an emergence of games in industry and government.

Virtually everyone has heard of the America’s Army Game, however few realize it has become the most effective recruiting tool the armed forces has at their current disposal. In fact, the game has proven so successful the Navy has recently launched a similar game focused on recruiting and I think we will see others for the Marines and Air Force emerge soon. Rumor is that the next iteration of Americas Army will include more accurate and specialized roles for players and move beyond merely the recruiting role and become an important training tool for new recruits.

Not entirely dissimilar to the Armed Forces use of games we are seeing several defense contractors beginning to utilize games to demonstrate capabilities of prototype and future defense technologies (armorment, weapons, vehicles, etc). In the past, contractors built elaborate animations and simulations or models to demonstrate the capabilities, but the interactive nature of games enables users to actually control the demonstrations and get real feel for the new technologies.

The pervasiveness of games has not been limited to military aspects, in Banking we have seen Banking Business Simulation become a valued training tool for many financial institutions. In BBS , bankers (or wannabe bankers) have the opportunity to experience true to life management of a large financial institution without the risk of bankrupting the general account or Grandma’s life savings.

In Healthcare, we see Flexism allowing Doctors and administrators to view problems and issues that may arise due to sudden influx of patients, giving the ability to realistically plan for and how to proceed should the need arise. We have also seen recent studies that relate increased effectiveness of doctors (specifically surgeons) to playing video games.

I could go on for hours (assuming you read slow and I type a lot) about how different industries are using games, however I think the most substantial impact industry will see from games is the skills the current players are developing. Now we have all heard from the many “sociologists” on the impact of violent games and television on our youth (we are not going to debate that point on this blog, however the August 6 issue of The Economist does a good job of it), but we rarely see the positives. Recently, I read an interesting post regarding how games enable students to learn how to make better and quicker decisions. In a game, one learns the impact of their decision almost immediately, but more importantly (with exception of course) one also learns a single bad decision rarely results in immediate death, and is generally recoverable. Several studies have shown this to have a direct impact on how students make decisions in their outside of games lives, making decisions more rapidly and with fewer regrets. Even more impressive than general decision making skills are the complex thought processes and fairly advanced business principles that children are acquiring from games. Last week as I was sitting in my office my daughter came in and asked “daddy , should I hire another maintenance man for my zoo ?” to which I non-challantly replied “sure, why not”- from there my eyes glossed over as she stated “well, I can afford one but it will take 50% of my positive cash flow, and while I am forecasting a 35% revenue growth , I have to be careful to not let my operational expenses get too high because I need to build my capital for future improvements.” My daughter is 12 years old and she understands complex business considerations and how to apply them, these same principles I didn’t even hear about until I was in business school.

My kids are not unique, a few days ago I was speaking with a co-worker about her son playing RTS games and she shared her observation. Her son was ‘killing off’ his own army , and she enquired as to why ? (hoping of course not to get some morbid response), and he explained that this particular units were “too specialized” and he needed to get rid of them in order to build out other specialties an remain in population limits. Managing resources and balancing enterprise needs are concepts many managers don’t have to deal with until they have 20 years experience, but our kids are now doing it for fun.

These kids are experiencing business concepts in ways that past generations could never imagine and they get it. Now the issue of ‘have vs have nots’ becomes even more pronounced, kids that have access to current technology and games will leave those that don’t behind in their dust. Your thoughts ?

One of the most fundamental modes of learning for children is games. Are there similar examples for adults? Of course, a perfect example is the flight simulator. Pilot train extensively using flight simulators. This is used for basic as well as advanced training so that pilots can be subjected to unlikely and stressful situations so they can learn to react quickly and with high probability of success.

Game consoles and the immersive quality of games has advanced significantly yet we don’t see this capability utilized for training much. Periodically you see a brief mention in the literature but where are the “killer-apps” here?

The relatively obvious concept of battle training for soldiers is one I’ve heard mentioned but not seen a lot written about it.

How about drivers training? We used to have simulators that were basically no better than a movie. At the Mall of America in Minneapolis there is a business that provides a virtual speedway complete with mockup NASCAR cars (with tactile simulation). The cars share a virtual speedway. I had heard at one time that the illusion is sufficiently accurate that some drivers actually train there. It seems like a small step to a high quality immersive Drivers Education “game” that would actually train drivers (new and experieced) about how to deal with real world emergencies (like blow-outs, hydroplaning, kids running into the street, etc)

Much of exceptional sport performance is actually mental. Built on top of the physical abilities top athletes in competitive sports like baseball, hockey, football, etc. have intuitive understanding of the game stragegy and how individual positions / responsibilities tie together. Perhaps a game training simulator would allow a linebacker (for example) to gain the intuitive knowledge needed without having to get ground into hamburger.

Maybe there is no business model for this given the cost of developing the top games. But maybe with this next generation of consoles and application development tools it may become cost effective to develop apps like this that would be useful beyond just entertainment.