Getting back in the game

Apart from a couple of recent outbursts in response to local and global politics, I'm pretty much at least two months behind on blogging. However, this is the post that will rectify that, and then maybe I can actually start moving forward with the regular blogging about games and what not that I nearly started doing at the end of 2010. In this post, you'll find some stuff about the IMSH conference, Eric Bauman's new LLC (and website) Clinical Playground, a few thoughts about my experience in the 2011 Global Game Jam, a bump for the 2011 GLS conference, umm . . . nothing about the current state of politics in Wisconsin (there'll be more on that at a later time), but it does include a bonus picture of a Norwegian Elkhound. All that plus something I surely left out after the jump.

To get the ball rolling, my friend and colleague Eric Bauman (who I've mentioned on this blog previously) tapped me to participate in the 11th annual International Meeting on Simulation in Healthcare (IMSH) conference in New Orleans at the end of January. I was only able to squeeze a couple of days out of my schedule to drop in on the conference, but it was well worth the trip. IMSH is a different scene from any of the other game or simulation conferences I've attended previously owing largely to the fact that it's populated by medical professionals. That said, a significant majority of the audience in the room during the panel I spoke on worked on the learning side of the industry, and in that respect they actually bore a rather close resemblance to some of the other crowds I've spoken in front of. The session went over extremely well, as did the first annual IMSH arcade which involved a handul of serious games focused on education and/or training in a variety of health care areas. I see this sort of professional arcade as being the start of a trend in game and simulation conferences. After all, the average participant is likely to get a lot more value out of playing your games than just hearing you talking about them.

This trip also marked my first visit to New Orleans. I can't say I saw too much of it, but I was able to hit up Bourbon Street with some colleagues for a little bit on the second night. It seemed strangely empty of patrons, but before attributing too much of that to Katrina I should disclose that it was a Monday night and a rainy 50 degrees out. Stil, several Abita IPAs later and I wasn't too terribly concerned about the cool or the wet. A good time was definitely had, but mostly based off of this experience I'm looking forward to a return in April for the AERA conference when the weather should be warmer and the streets will be swarming with education researchers.

Before leaving the topic of IMSH, I do have to take this opportunity to plug Eric's new LLC Clinical Playground. I could drum up some text to describe Clinical Playground, but it'll be more effective if I just drop in the content from the about page here:

Clinical Playground, LLC is a nexus of academic and industry collaboration focusing on the use simulation and game-based learning for health sciences, public safety, and science education. The founding and managing member of Clinical Playground, LLC, Dr. Eric B. Bauman along with a number of associates throughout industry and higher education believe that leveraging technology, specifically game-based technology and virtual environments represents an important paradigm shift in the educational process.  Medical, Nursing and allied health education, as well as public safety education including, fire, emergency medical services, law enforcement, and organizational managers are well suited to take advantage of game-based and virtual environment training opportunities.

Yup, that sums it up pretty tidily. Anyone interested in getting involved should definitely drop Dr. Bauman a line at: e b a u m a n @ c l i n i c a l p l a y g r o u n d . c o m

Before I leave the topic of games and conferences, I need to throw in a little bump for GLS 7.0. Given the timing on this post I'll probably drop another bump for the conference in when we're closer to the deadline in about a week (and hopefully Madison looks a bit less combustible). Still, the GLS proposal deadline approacheth. Go here and submit a proposal. Also, if you're a game developer who would like to sit on an exciting panel about contemporary trends in video games, you should get in touch with me.

Meanwhile, back on the real back log, when I got back to Madison from New Orleans at the end of January, the Global Game Jam was only days away. So after wrapping up the work week, I headed over to the WID/MIR building where Kevin Harris and the rest of the Madison area GGJ staff were hosting a jam site for a second year. I should probably clarify that last point, as the jam site was at the UW–Madison Teacher Education building last year, but it was the same basic crew running the location.

Last year I helped out as support staff, but this year I decided to get my hands dirty and do some game design. I warned my team on the front end that I wouldn't be able to make a full 48 hour commitment to the jam as I was also working on finishing up an over due book chapter, but as it turned out my intermittent participation was in some ways a real boon for our design process. Basically, when I left the group they had rejected a basic idea that Patrick had proposed involving one player trying to destroy the others by dropping meteors on numbered board spaces. We tested a bare bones version of the game, but we all agreed it just wasn't very fun.

I intended to do some work on a book chapter with an imminent deadline that evening, but when I got home I found that all I could think about was Meteor Strike. I threw together two possible revisions of the game, and when I returned the next day pitched the team on some of the modifications I had conceived of. The team took those concepts and modified them further leading to a playable prototype. 

In the original version the board consisted of unevenly sized spaces that were numbered. The player dropping the meteors would examine the board and write on a piece of paper which spots to strike. The rest of the players would then move their population pieces, and the paper would be opened to determine who lived and who died. Based off of feedback from the group on that first night, my proposal the following day removed the meteor player and utilized dice to determine where meteors struck. 

At any rate, I'm not going to give a full post mortem on the game here, but I will say that the most awesome part by far for me was watching the team test the hell out of that prototype and tweak it into the game it is now. As noted in my previous post on the topic, you can find instructions for everything you need to play the game here, as well as a list of the team members.

In other games news, I've been meaning to mention a few things about WoW and Cataclysm, although now it's been the better part of a month since I've played. Additionally, my authenticator just died so I can't get on tonight . .  very frustrating. I do know I wanted to say something about how suprisingly enjoyable the water travel in Vashj'ir was, and I definitely wanted to complain about the voice acting and the way the narrative is cut up (because quests don't really bridge into instances), but I can't help thinking there was something more substantial as well . . .  ahh well, there's more than one Cataclysm blog post forthcoming so I'm sure I'll get to it.

On a totally unrelated note, my mom and I recently noted that there just weren't enough cool Norwegian Elkhound pictures up online. Consequently, I conclude this post with this awesome image of her dog Teddy.