London Serious Games Showcase Announced for August 30, 2005

August 18, 2005 -- Computer Games are getting serious. Not only as a modern popular entertainment format, but also as a powerful vehicle for education, cultural dissemination, training, public policy, healthcare, simulation, and many other applications which fall outside the entertainment software norm.

Today the Serious Games Initiative (www.seriousgames.org) working with local U.K. collaborators announced it is producing a free Serious Games Showcase event for the evening of August 30, 2005 at the London Science Museum's Dana Centre. This showcase is designed to provide a broad look to attendees of what serious games are and can be. It will feature work from U.K. based developers as well as titles from developers in the U.S. and other countries.

The showcase event is designed primarily for potential customers (corporate, government, non-profit, military) and members of the game development, and academic communities that are aiding in the production of serious game projects.

"The goal of the Serious Games Initiative is to foster a global community of practitioners and customers around the idea of serious games. Our job is to promote the use of games, game developers, and game technologies to domains outside of game-based entertainment to seek breakthroughs in learning, healthcare, training and more. The London Showcase is designed to put a face on a phrase in the U.K. a country that features a vibrant game development industry." said Ben Sawyer co-founder of the Serious Games Initiative.

The Showcase takes place on the eve of Game Developers Conference Europe and Games Market Europe -- two trade shows which are expected to draw hundreds of developers from across Europe to London during the week of August 29.

The event is co-produced by the Serious Games Initiative, Imaginary Productions (www.imaginary.co.uk), TIGA (www.tiga.org) and the University College for the Creative Arts (www.ucreative.co.uk). It is sponsored and co-hosted by the Business Development Unit at the University College for the Creative Arts, and has also received generous support from Blitz Games (www.blitzgames.com) and Breakaway Games (www.breakawaygames.com).

Event Details

30th AUGUST 2005

6pm - 11pm

d.café @ DANA CENTRE

165 Queensgate

South Kensington

London SW7 5HE

www.danacentre.org.uk

ADMISSION FREE

REGISTRATION BY RSVP with full contact information to rsvp@seriousgames.org

PRESS WELCOME

The showcase will include work from Blitz Games, Nesta Futurelab, Desq, Aqua Pacific, Imaginary, Immersive Education, all UK companies and organisations. These will be complimented by the latest output from the US and beyond, including projects from Breakaway Games, Digital mill and Carnegie Melon University.

Alongside this, some of the country's most promising new games design talent will be showing off their projects developed on the new MA Digital Games Design programme at the University College for the Creative Arts in Farnham (www.dgdu.org). Many of these projects blur the distinction between entertainment, education and culture, and perhaps show a glimpse of what digital games could achieve as they mature as a medium and move beyond a purely entertainment focus.

About the Serious Games Initiative

The Serious Games Initiative is housed at The Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars Project on Foresight and Governance. It is assisted by Digitalmill, a game industry and development consulting firm based in Portland, Maine.

The Initiative focuses on users for games, game talent, and game technologies in domains outside of game-entertainment. This includes a unique focus on games that explore management and leadership challenges facing the public sector part. It's overall charter is to help forge productive links between the video game industry and projects outside of the industry.

The Initiative also spawned the Games for Health Project (www.gamesforhealth.org) to develop a community and best practices platform for the numerous games and game-based innovations being built for health care applications. In 2004 The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation became a sponsor of the Games for Health Project.