The Complete Guide To Simulations And Serious Games

"Ready to blow your mind? Spend 15 seconds reading Clark Aldrich's The Complete Guide to Simulations and Serious Games. Witty, fast-paced, and non-linear -- it's Spock meets Alton Brown." -- Lynne Kenney, Psy.D., The Family Coach This exciting work offers designers a new way to see the world, model it, and present it through simulations. A groundbreaking resource, it includes a wealth of new tools and terms and a corresponding style guide to help understand them. The author -- a globally recognized industry guru -- covers topics such as virtual experiences, games, simulations, educational simulations, social impact games, practiceware, game-based learning/digital game based learning, immersive learning, and serious games. This book is the first of its kind to present definitions of more than 600 simulation and game terms, concepts, and constructs.

Designed for learning professionals and drawing on both game creators and instructional designers, Learning by Doing explains how to select, research, build, sell, deploy, and measure the right type of educational simulation for the right situation. It covers simple approaches that use basic or no technology through projects on the scale of computer games and flight simulators. The book role models content as well, written accessibly with humor, precision, interactivity, and lots of pictures. Many will also find it a useful tool to improve communication between themselves and their customers, employees, sponsors, and colleagues. As John Coné, former chief learning officer of Dell Computers, suggests, “Anyone who wants to lead or even succeed in our profession would do well to read this book.”

Many designers, policy makers, teachers, and other practitioners are beginning to understand the usefulness of using digital games beyond entertainment. Games have been developed for teaching, recruiting and to collect data to improve search engines. This book examines the fundamentals of designing any game with a serious purpose and provides a way of thinking on how to design one successfully. The reader will be introduced to a design philosophy called “Triadic Game Design.”; a theory that all games involve three worlds: the worlds of Reality, Meaning, and Play. Each world is affiliated with aspects. A balance needs to be found within and between the three worlds. Such a balance is difficult to achieve, during the design many tensions will arise, forcing designers to make trade-offs. To deal with these tensions and to ensure that the right decisions are made to create a harmonic game, a frame of reference is needed. This is what Triadic Game Design offers.

How to create a simulation where participants have a sense of freedom and personal control while still maintaining the structure necessary for an effective story is a difficult task indeed. This book examines how to create an engaging, effective story (necessary to teach participants), while relating practical considerations of building a simulation. It also looks at stories as classic ways of teaching and gathering knowledge and considers other theories of interactive narrative design such as synthetic story creation and management and participant-generated story experiences. It also discusses enabling technologies in artificial intelligence, synthetic characters design and development, speech recognition technology, 3D modelling, and the future of story-driven games. Story Driven Simulations reviews the existing efforts in this field as well as focusing on the recent efforts of Paramount Pictures and The Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California, where this expert author team created successful simulations for the U.S. Army, Department of Defense, as well as other educational simulations.

"This book presents research on the most recent technological developments in all fields of knowledge or disciplines of computer games development, including planning, design, development, marketing, business management, users and behavior"--Provided by publisher.

All new updated 2nd edition. Why should organizations learn more about business simulations and serious games?The answer is simple: They are engaging, applicable, contemporary, exciting, and best of all, they change behavior faster and more naturally. Simulations are not as complex to implement as they were even a few years ago. Creating a custom solution is not only far more effective but also now within reach of most companies. Shift: Using Business Simulations and Serious Games walks you through the process of deciding whether or not to use a business simulation, gamification, or serious game, helps you decide to build or buy, how to implement them, and how to create a sustainable program. Author William Hall, an award-winning Apple employee, writes with both humor and wisdom to distill years of experience in technology, gaming, and education into an easy-to-read guide for busy executives and managers. Simulations are a fun yet serious, challenging, and practical way to develop employees. Outcomes can include strategic alignment, strategic change, business acumen, leadership development, succession planning, and collaboration. You can change up a person's work environment and enable them to practice professional skills in real time with real people and actual scenarios. Shift: Using Business Simulations and Serious Games also answers questions like: How do you know if you need a business simulation, gamification, or serious game? What are some uses for business simulations and games? Can I use simulations to improve the performance of top executives? Should I find a developer or design one in house? What's a good budget for something like this? Even if you are already using business simulations, business gamification, or serious games, this guide will help you be more effective and save money. This is not a step-by-step technical jargon filled manual how to build mathematical models or simulations. Author William Hall assisted Steve Jobs prepare keynote presentations, and he delivers this topic with brevity, impact and charm. This is an easy to read, easy to digest, and easy to use introduction to business simulations and serious games. This is not a technical manual with steps how to build a business simulation. Editorial Reviews for Shift: Using Business Simulations and Serious Games "William Hall takes you on a practical journey on how business simulations and serious games can serve as a useful tool for today's learners. He is refreshingly candid and provides relevant questions and suggestions to aid the customer in deciding what the best learning solutions are for their organizations, and how best to implement them."- Dawn Moore, Commercial Learning Manager-Leadership Learning, AstraZeneca Biopharmaceutical "Bridging gaming and business is a terrifically exciting prospect, with untold potential for businesses and a multitude of untapped success stories - and starts with this book!" -- Carl Olivier, Principle PM Manager, Microsoft, Skype Division "This book provides keen insights and practical strategies for anyone looking to upgrade the quality of their training programs. It's enjoyable to read and packed with valuable information."-- Josh Gordesky, President of Game Plan Communications

The first computer simulation book for anyone designing or building a game Answering the growing demand for a book catered for those who design, develop, or use simulations and games this book teaches you exactly what you need to know in order to understand the simulations you build or use all without having to earn another degree. Organized into three parts, this informative book first defines computer simulations and describes how they are different from live-action and paper-based simulations. The second section builds upon the previous, with coverage of the technical details of simulations, a detailed description of how models are built, and an explanation of how those models are translated into simulations. Finally, the last section develops four examples that walk you through the process from model to finished and functional simulation, all of which are created using freely available software and all of which can be downloaded. Targets anyone interested in learning about the inner workings of a simulation or game, but may not necessarily be a programmer or scientist Offers technical details on what simulations are and how they are built without overwhelming you with intricate jargon Breaks down simulation vs. modeling and traditional vs. computer simulations Examines verification and validation and discusses simulation tools Whether you need to learn how simulations work or it's something you've always been curious about but couldn't find the right resource, look no further. The Guide to Computer Simulations and Games is the ideal book for getting a solid understanding of this fascinating subject.

This textbook provides an introduction to the fundamentals of serious games, which differ considerably from computer games that are meant for pure entertainment. Undergraduate and graduate students from various disciplines who want to learn about serious games are one target group of this book. Prospective developers of serious games are another, as they can use the book for self-study in order to learn about the distinctive features of serious game design and development. And ultimately, the book also addresses prospective users of serious game technologies by providing them with a solid basis for judging the advantages and limitations of serious games in different application areas such as game-based learning, training and simulation or games for health. To cater to this heterogeneous readership and wide range of interests, every effort was made to make the book flexible to use. All readers are expected to study Chapter 1, as it provides the necessary basics and terminology that will be used in all subsequent chapters. The eleven chapters that follow cover the creation of serious games (design, authoring processes and tools, content production), the runtime context of serious games (game engines, adaptation mechanisms, game balancing, game mastering, multi-player serious games), the effects of serious games and their evaluation (player experience, assessment techniques, performance indicators), and serious games in practice (economic aspects, cost-benefit analysis, serious game distribution). To familiarize the readers with best practice in this field, the final chapter presents more than 30 selected examples of serious games illustrating their characteristics and showcasing their practical use. Lecturers can select chapters in a sequence that is most suitable for their specific course or seminar. The book includes specific suggestions for courses such as “Introduction to Serious Games”, “Entertainment Technology”, “Serious Game Design”, “Game-based Learning”, and “Applications of Serious Games”.