Saturday, May 17, 2008

Gaming a serious indstry, but are we serious about it

20 years ago, if you had thought about becoming a professional gamer, your parents would have thrown you out of the door or laugh their head off. Today gaming is a serious business worth over millions and projected billions by 2011. Gaming is no longer a laughing matter but a serious industry. And why not? It is fun! My wife said she never like playing games, then I downloaded a tetris like game called Gem and next thing I know I could not get my mobile phone back from her. She was hooked!

Look at these few examples, the military using the hours simulation games to train new soldiers, flight simulators, NASA, there are world wide gaming tournaments almost as if the Olympics have been computerized- football, forget about next week when you can watch your favourite team but you can now play the game as if you were the player yourself, and the list goes on.

Gaming in learning industry- education, corporate training. That's something new... is it? Training is also another million dollar industry and people these days sitting through hours and hours of "lecture based" training- I wonder if they ever fall asleep. There are some companies I heard using games like Warcraft to strategy and communications- don't ask me how,I have't played the game yet. Simulation training people for systems are available today and it is simple to create. Software like Adobe Captivate or Macromedia Breeze or free softwares like Jing are available to capture systems simulation.

So who's laughing now? Isn't it time for you to jump in and play a game?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I love games. Sega dream and PS 2 like Sim City, Shenmue, and Tomb Raider. Training throuigh games is a brilliant ideas. Currently I am trying out the 2nd Life that you have introduced to me several months ago.

Laurence