Serious Games Trade Body ANGILS' Founding Members Announce Strategy & Action Plan To Drive Market

News by GamesIndustry International Contributor

Published on March 7, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

6TH March, 2007

The founding board members* of trade body ANGILS, all leading serious games organizations, met today at the inaugural board meeting. The resulting action plan will provide much-needed focus to drive the market by identifying the key issues facing the industry today.

Martine Parry, CEO said: 'There are a number of commercial and educational first-adopter applications of serious games that include: personalized learning, exer-gaming and corporate education. Representing many of the leading serious games clients and suppliers we are in a position to identify the 'big rocks' - the pressing needs of organizations and educational establishments that drive adoption - and then to assemble working parties lead by specialists in their fields to focus on mapping pragmatic solutions.'

She added: 'We need to drill down to present the value of serious games to the commercial and educational markets to widen our understanding of how to position them: from engagement through productivity to mission-critical outcomes. This is the main aim of the working parties. The first available detail of the dynamics of the European Corporate Learning Games market in the recently released report** has been illuminating and we should build on the intellectual capital to help realize our aims in and beyond this application area.'

Jim Piggot, CEO of TPLD, a leading serious games developer in the UK and Founding Member of ANGILS said: 'There are many organisations chartered with a wide range of aspects related to Games Based Learning (GBL). However we believe that ANGILS will provide a catalyst to help identify and resolve the business issues impeding the growth of the industry. The maturity of the technology and organisations now operating in this market can help significantly improve on the fidelity of current business programs chartered with tackling strategic organisational issues such strategic change management and health and safety. Business is becoming more complex and these demands will increase over the next 5 years.'

ANGILS will be announcing the focus of its first working parties and members soon.

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*Founding Board Members lead by Chairman Prof Bob Stone: TPLD, PIXELearning, imaginary srl, KWP, PlayGen, Geomerics

**ANGILS has sponsored the only publicly-available report on the dynamics of the market in Europe for corporate learning games and plans more illuminating market reports of this type. The report is available to purchase from www.angils.org/reports.htm

ABOUT ANGILS

ANGILS is a non-profit-making organisation based in the UK, originally launched in 2003 as a network for individuals interested in application of games and other innovative 'knowledge economy and games' technologies and skills in non-games industry applications. ANGILS is now transitioned to a trade association by offering membership to organisations in addition to individuals.

ANGILS is focused on the business-related issues of: 1. serious games and 2. emerging technologies and techniques from the digital entertainment sector (such as search and AI), applicable to a wider non-entertainment audience. More www.angils.org

ABOUT MARTINE PARRY

Martine has held senior positions in the knowledge, games and IT industries for 20 years and has been involved with the key elements of serious games over that period. She is founding CEO of ANGILS, and runs Apply Group, a leading marketing consultancy.

Over the last 10 years she has worked with the games industry on projects across product management, market analysis, conference production and business development. She has worked with Metrowerks and Games Investor on market intelligence reports on mobile games and MMOs, was Conference Director for GDC Europe 2004 on behalf of CMP and was instrumental in building Tiga as a successful trade association at its inception.

Previously she developed markets for AI, visualisation, simulation, pattern recognition and performance support tools and service organisations, across sectors including defence, the intelligence community, energy, telecommunications, health and finance. She has also worked within corporate learning, scoping 'blended' learning solutions for companies including Barclays Bank and Ford and always likes to be at the cutting-edge of the application of techniques and technologies to solve challenging issues.

ABOUT JIM PIGGOT

Up until 2004 Jim served as the Vice President of the Software & Services Line of Business within NCR's Financial Solutions Division and was responsible for the development, management and global deployment of the self service software business. Jim joined TPLD as CEO in September 2004 and has led the development of the companies global strategy as well as focusing on creating a new GBL product line and the development of operational processes, procedures and disciplines required to set the company up to deploy GBL software products globally. As an independent entrepreneur Jim has co-founded or invested in several companies from software to consultancy.

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