Event Details
HandsOn Games and Interactive Digital for Social Change is focused on bringing together best of practice developments, developers, innovators, and commissioners creating digital means to highlight important issues and aid social change.
Join us for an afternoon of demos, peer meeting, discussion and hands on experiences with a wide range of developers and users of games and interactives for social change. The aims of the day are to:
- Experience and experiment with games and interactive digital creations developed for social change and to highlight important issues.
- Learn and share ideas and designs from practitioners’ experience of creating and disseminating games for social change – focus on the opportunities to play with the end results.
- Build a collective view of the state of the field – do we have agreed parameters, how are we learning and adapting to the changing landscape of digital training?
- Debate important drivers shaping this field – new technologies, an increasingly growing sector, changing appetites among service users and innovators.
- Identify the priorities for further events, strengthen your networks and negotiate the collaborations that will help the field shift gear. The workshop is participatory.
Demo machines are on hand to engage with the projects.
Show and tell will be relaxed and speakers will provide impetus, but you will have ample opportunity to pursue your goals.
Games and Interactives on show:
- DeadEnds by RollingSounds (about issues around knife crime in the UK)
- FloodSim by PlayGen (about issues around flooding in the UK)
- Climate Challenge by Red Redemption (about issues around climate change)
- GameLab
- Resist and Other development by Germination http://germination.co.uk/ (discussion from the point of view of producers commissioning a number of mechanisms for social change)
We will also cover the following games:
- Global Conflict – Palestine
- Ayiti – The Cost of Life
- Airport Security Game
- 3rd World Farmer
- Food Force
- Pictures for Truth
- Darfur is Dying
- Global Conflict – Latin America
- PeaceMaker
- McDonald’s Video Game
Review of the event
The first serious games and virtual worlds technologies event for developers by developers, was held in London on 29th July 2008.
Organisers, PlayGen, who are firmly footed in the Serious Games space, hosted the event at their office location in Shoreditch, one of London’s most popular areas for Digital Media.
The HandsOn conference is an opportunity for developers and innovators to get together in a relaxed environment without any hard selling” Kam Star of PlayGen and organiser of HandsOn.
Usually people would pay to be here or buying would be free, but this is not what HandsOn is for. We believe that innovation only happens when you bring people together in a relaxed atmosphere and where they can mingle together, the key thing here is to create partnerships – get to know each other without the added pressure to sell or buy”.
The plan for the event was a series of presentations from a variety of companies working in serious games and virtual worlds, followed by an opportunity to have a ‘hands on’ session with various games and technologies, and the event closed with an opportunity for discussion.
The HandsOn conference included speakers who were technology developers, technology innovators and entrepreneurs including Kam Star from PlayGen, Matt Seeney from TPLD Ltd, Dan Licari from West Midlands Serious Games, Gary Bracey from DigiMask, Ian Wilson from Emotion Ai, Dave Taylor from Imperial College and Rohan Freeman from SineWave Company Opensim.
HandsOn is a community effort to bring the best of British Innovators in the digital sphere together, it’s a platform to come with your technology and be able to showcase it, get feedback and build the relationships that can take the work to the next level.”
Next up was Matt Seeney of TPLD Ltd, Matt showed us a number of boxed up products to increase team building, leadership training and also a number of school products. Matt also showcased InfiniTeams, which is designed to be used for corporate teambuilding, leadership, strategy and problem solving, recruitment and other forms of corporate training. InfiniTeams is the core product which can have a variety of training content wrapped around it.
We asked Matt where he sees Serious Games in two years time? “Used everywhere. Especially within the corporate industry, Serious Games can be particularly more useful for virtual teams. We are finding more business for team building, three major corporate companies have approached us in the last few months, and we are now beginning to see more of a demand for serious games in this type of environment”.
Followed by presentations by Gary Bracey from DigiMask showing how easy it is to develop 3d avatars of real people using one or two images, which could include for example, team members, leadership executives or famous role models, into serious games to add a more personal touch and better engagement for users.
Ian Wilson from Emotion Ai showcased their platform technology which uses emotional communication from the avatar being sad, happy or stressed.
Dave Taylor from Imperial College presented the latest updates on Second Life and how this is enhancing communication between facilities across countries, and finally Graham Freeman of Opensim who is the biggest retailer within Second Life …
