Annenberg Workshop on Games for Learning, Development & Change
Welcome to the homepage of the Annenberg Workshop on Games for Learning, Development & Change! This event will be hosted by the Annenberg Studies on Computer Games (aka ASC Games Group) on the USC campus, May 21-22, 2007.
As you know, there have been many new developments in the gaming industry in recent years. For one, a new field of serious games has emerged as designers and developers use gaming for non-entertainment purposes such as education, healthcare, policy-making, and corporate management. Leading organizations in this area have initiated conferences like the Serious Games Summit, Games for Health, and Games for Change. Funding agencies such as the MacArthur Foundation have indicated an interest by investing in research projects that focus on the potential of games to produce socially desirable outcomes.
The University of Southern California is among a handful of educational institutions that are at the cutting edge of these developments. At USC, the Annenberg School for Communication, together with the Viterbi School of Engineering and the School of Cinematic Arts, has been an active player in a collaborative effort to advance serious games. Launched in 2003, the ASC Games Group is an interdisciplinary research team that seeks to conduct systematic and innovative research about the influence of game playing on individuals, groups, and society at large.
Given the pressing need for theoretical development and scientific research on this topic, the ASC Games Group has decided to hold a workshop on games for learning, development, and change. The goals for the workshop are to (1) promote the value of social science for advancing the field of serious games research, (2) summarize the state of the art research on serious games effectiveness, (3) define the problems and opportunities involved in advancing this field, and (4) develop perspectives for future collaborative work.
Over 30 scholars and industry advocates of serious games from North America and Europe have been invited to this workshop. The program for this workshop has been intentionally designed to encourage dialogues among researchers and practitioners from diverse backgrounds. In addition, we have arranged poster sessions for people to interact with junior scholars and graduate students with shared interests. We will also include demonstrations of a few serious games developed by the teams at USC. Please feel free to explore the details about this workshop on this website and contact us if you have any questions. Major results from these discussions will be published in an edited book later this year.