Games beyond Entertainment : Observations, Ideas, and Frameworks for Future Serious Games

Please join us for next week’s lecture with Ben Sawyer of Digitalmill.  This lecture is open to the public; please feel free to forward this email to friends and colleagues who might be interested.

WHO: Ben Sawyer

WHAT: CFB Lecture Series: “Games beyond Entertainment : Observations, Ideas, and Frameworks for Future Serious Games”

WHEN: Thursday, March 19th at 1pm

WHERE: Wiesner Room, MIT Media Lab, 20 Ames Street Cambridge, MA - 02139 (2nd Floor)

ABSTRACT/BIOGRAPHY:
Ben Sawyer has spent what seems a lifetime in the nascent serious games field.  In 1999 he produced one of the first of a new wave of games for purposes beyond entertainment : Virtual U (www.virtual-u.org) which attempted to be for universities what SimCity was to towns and cities.  From that experience he went on to found the Serious Games Initiative the first effort to bring together a community of practice, events, and knowledge-base for the field.  In 2004 he co-founded the Games for Health Project which looks at the use of games for health and healthcare.  Alongside these public community and advocacy projects Sawyer has designed/produced or advised over 15 serious game projects over the past nine years.  During this time he has had a unique perspective on the greater use of games and where things seem to be heading.  In this talk he will provide a bit of history of serious games, and share unique insights into where he sees things at today and in the near future.