US Gives Raytheon $10.5M For 'Serious Games' 108
coondoggie writes "These aren't your basic video gaming systems here. The U.S. government gave Raytheon BBN Technologies $10.5 million today to develop what it called 'serious games' that feature an international detective theme developed by game designers, cognitive psychologists and experts in intelligence analysis."
Link (Score:5, Informative)
I've never heard of Raythorn BBN Technologies and I bet you haven't either. So here. [bbn.com]
Re:Link (Score:5, Informative)
I've never heard of Raythorn BBN Technologies and I bet you haven't either.
Bolt, Beranek and Newman basically built the first generation of the internet.
Raytheon is the single largest private employer in the state of Massachusetts.
Apparently Raytheon purchased BBN - although for a while during the dotcom crazy they were called Genuity.
Serious games are actually useful ... (Score:5, Informative)
In the middle of the greatest deficit it's good to see our government spending money on games.
Serious games are actually useful and they can save not only money but lives. One area of serious gaming are training simulators. Think beyond flight simulators. They are serious games that teach soldiers how to interact with members of a very different culture. There are serious games that present fire fighters with different types of chemical spills to see how they handle it and react to unfolding events. This particular game also has a very serious and seemingly worthwhile goal:
"The goal of the Sirius Program is to create experimental Serious Games to train participants and measure their proficiency in recognizing and mitigating the cognitive biases that commonly affect all types of intelligence analysis. The research objective is to experimentally manipulate variables in Serious Games and to determine whether and how such variables might enable player-participant recognition and persistent mitigation of cognitive biases. The Program will provide a basis for experimental repeatability and independent validation of effects, and identify critical elements of design for effective analytic training in Serious Games. The cognitive biases of interest that will be examined include: (1) Confirmation Bias, (2) Fundamental Attribution Error, (3) Bias Blind Spot, (4) Anchoring Bias, (5) Representativeness Bias, and (6) Projection Bias."
https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=1793ab48906acabaf923c76486c29c0f&_cview=0 [fbo.gov]
Re:Good idea ... (Score:4, Informative)
Deus Ex wasn't bad for that.