Welcoming Games as THE Educational Medium Michael Zyda zydausc'edu - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
1 / 31
Title: Welcoming Games as THE Educational Medium Michael Zyda zydausc'edu
1
Welcoming Games as THE Educational MediumMichael
Zyda zyda_at_usc.edu
2
My Background
- USC GamePipe Lab Director - 2005 - present
- Naval Postgraduate School - 1984 - 2005
- Professor of Computer Science
- Directed, NPSNET Research Group - 1986 - 1996
- MOVES Institute - founded directed - 1996 -
2004 - USC Institute for Creative Technologies - drafted
original research agenda operating plan - 1999 - Pioneer in computer graphics, virtual reality,
modeling simulation, serious games.
3
My background continued
- National Research Council - 1992 - present
- Behavioral Social Sciences Education
Commission - Computer Science Telecommunications Board
- Aeronautics Space Engineering Board
- Naval Studies Board
- Mathematics Its Application Board
- am Permanent National Associate of the National
Academies
4
Americas Army Game
- Americas Army Operations multiple award
winning online game, October 1999 March 2004. - Awards including Action Vaults 2002 Debut Game
of the Year, Surprise of the Year, and
honorable-mention Multiplayer Game of the Year
Frictionless Insights Best Business Model
(Developer) at E3 2002 IGN Editors Choice Award
for first-person shooters 2002 IGNs Biggest
Surprise of E3 2002 Gamespys Best PC Action
Game runner-up 2002 Penny Arcades Best
Misappropriation of Taxpayer Dollars Ever
Wargamers Best of Show, first-person/tactical
shooters 2002 Well-Rounded Entertainments Best
of E3 2002 DoubleClick's Insight Awards,
honorable mention, Best Multi-Channel Marketing
Campaign 2002 Academy of Interactive Arts and
Sciences, finalist, PC First Person Action Game
of the Year February 2003 and Computer Gaming
Worlds Editors Choice January 2003. - Served as the principal investigator and
development director of the Americas Army PC
game funded by the Assistant Secretary of the
Army for Manpower and Reserve Affairs. Took
America's Army from conception to three million
plus registered players and hence, transformed
Army recruiting.
5
Clip - Americas Army
6
(No Transcript)
7
So
- After 21 years at the Naval Postgraduate School
and my experience with Americas Army, I quit on
my 50th birthday (my present to myself) - I decided I wanted to create a science of games
and an educational program to support the
formation of that science.
8
Why a science of games?
9
Why a science of games?
- Why should we create a science of games and an
allied educational program? - Games are our first high bandwidth, two-way
communications medium we need to know how to
deploy that medium for societal good. - The game industry is not going to do that RD.
10
Some inspiration
- Almost immediately after we announced Americas
Army, that game became the basis and inspiration
for a number of deployed training systems - - All future Army computer-based training systems
will look like games.
11
Game Clip - Training
12
Wouldnt it be nice if they could be taught
something more societally redeeming?
- After Americas Army had been out for about six
to nine months, mothers would state my son is
playing Americas Army five to six hours per day,
seven days a week. What is going to become of
him?. - The usual answer was that the Army now knew their
sons were twice as likely to consider a career in
the Army than the non-AA player upon reaching the
appropriate age. - When the mothers were asked if their sons knew a
lot about the US Army, the response was usually
they know everything about the Army, having
learned it from the game. Wouldnt it be nice if
they could be taught something more societally
redeeming from games?.
13
Clip - Medic Training
14
Grand Challenge
- In fact, perhaps the grand challenge is, can we
put all K-12 science and math education into
highly immersive, highly addictive games such
that we can replace teachers? - Provide individually-directed, human state aware,
measurable learning with games. - Turn teachers into Tutors instead of the primary
education delivery system. - To make this happen, it is clear that creating a
science of games, a scientific and engineering
method for building games and understanding and
analyzing game play has become essential.
15
Americas Army
- Americas Army - 8M registered players.
- Some 20,000 years of game play has occurred in
this game. - Americas Army cost 22M over 4 years.
16
World of Warcraft
- 8M registered players -
- An average player spends some 12 hours per week
in game holds a subscription for 6 months, some
288 hours in game. - 260,869 years of gameplay!
- Cost about 100M to develop.
17
Another metric
- 8M players at 288 hours each --
- LAUSD has about 710K students in it, so ten times
the number of students in LAUSD in WoW - each
spent some 288 hours in World of Warcraft. - How much time would an LAUSD student spend in
math/science in a 180 day school year? - Say 45 mins math, 45 mins science, for 1.5 hours
per day for 180 days is 270 hours! - So our kids are spending as much time in WoW as
they spend in a whole year of math/science
education AND they do that in 6 months, not the 9
months of the school year.
18
So
- With respect to our grand challenge of replacing
teachers with games, we want to build WoW-like
successful games with WoW budgets so that we can
compete for mindshare our kids time. - What do they learn in Americas Army?
- How to become an infantryman then a special
forces soldier. - What do they learn in WoW?
- Command control.
- So both are part of the no child left a
civilian program
19
So the cost of math/science games for K-12
- 13 (each year of K-12) x 100M, about 1.3B is
the ballpark for development - Operations, maintenance, are extra
- And the RD so we know how to do this
- Cost of Iraq war is pushing 1T for our so-far
four year adventure, so give us two days of the
expenditures of that war for development two
days for operations/maintenance one day for the
RD. - So lets call this the Give America Five
Program. - Note - in 2006 dollars, it cost 28B to get to
the moon.
20
So what am I doing to make this happen?
21
The USC GamePipe Laboratory Mission
- The mission of the GamePipe Laboratory is
interdisciplinary research, development
education on technologies design for the future
of interactive games their application. - from developing the supporting technologies for
increasing the complexity innovation in
produced games, - to developing serious entertainment games for
government corporate sponsors.
22
Game Development Degree Programs
- BS in Computer Science (Games)
- The goal of the BS degree is to educate students
capable of engineering next generation games
immediately upon graduation. Students in this
program receive a solid grounding in Computer
Science in addition to the art and design
required for functioning in the game industry. - MS in Computer Science (Game Development)
- The goal of the MS degree is to graduate
professionally educated students capable of
engineering next generation games and their
required technologies. - Degrees started Fall 2006
23
(No Transcript)
24
Immune Attack
- Funded by National Science Foundation
- Collaborators
- Brown University, Federation of American
Scientists, USC - USCs Game Innovation Lab (Cinema)
- USCs GamePipe Lab (Engineering)
- Topic Immunology
- Platform PC
- Target Audience AP biology students
25
(No Transcript)
26
Fish Quest
27
(No Transcript)
28
The GamePipe RD Agenda
29
Emotion Modeling Display
- The largest RD challenge in the coming years
with respect to cognition games is that of
modeling human emotion - Emotion modeling
- Emotion display
- Emotionally adaptive games
30
Show DVD
- DVD of latest student-built games
31
The GamePipe Laboratory
- Michael Zyda, Director
- Zyda_at_usc.edu
- http//gamepipe.usc.edu
Recommended
CrystalGraphics Presentations
