“Alt game dev”..Those words alone connote the clipped speech of a highly intelligent lifestyle game developer.
Hmm, what about Game Tech? or Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds Con 2011? What is being developed there?
At the Federal Consortium of Virtual Worlds Con 2011- a conference that concerns itself with the usage of virtual worlds by our federal and local governments, we asked these questions: what is the state of gaming in virtual worlds being used by our government?, how do games help us? and how do people in our government use games?
The participants came from the military, government, and education, from near and foreign lands, to see how data and games can work together, how new innovations in augmented reality and virtual worlds are changing how we run the government, how we train the military, and how we see ourselves.
We talked about SENDS (Science Enhanced Network Domains and Secure Social Spaces), with Dr. Carl Hunt and went on a virtual tour of social spaces with Craig Harm. We learned about their indoctrination to virtual worlds as they seek to found a new science for the study cyberspace, In fact, we were set into teams and created our own versions of problem solving environments during that course.
Later in the day, the Virtual Worlds in Government panel, recapped the CUNY project and brought us new information of three other vital projects. Dr. Kevin Holloway, talked about his National Center for Telehealth and Technology .
Bringing young people from two cultures together for to build something, in a virtual space. Not just architecture, but bridges of peace and understanding.
Doug Maxwell, MSME, Science and Technology manager at the Simulation and Training Technology Center in Orlando, spoke about his projects, the EDGE project , decided to set a challenge out for other designers. He devoted 10% of his time to designing things that would make the world better. It is gratifying to see, that his idea is still being practiced. Imagine if all of us did that.
There are many people in the world who do good things, who think about our global problems and how to solve them- these are some of those folks, and they do it with game environments and virtual worlds. They deserve to be recognized.