Socio-Cultural Games for Training and Analysis

This paper presents a theory for role playing simulation games intended to support analysts (and trainees) with generating and testing alternative competing hypotheses on how to influence world conflict situations. Simulated leaders and followers capable of playing these games are implemented in a cognitive modeling framework, called PMFserv, which covers value systems, personality and cultural factors, emotions, relationships, perception, stress/coping style and decision making. Of direct interest, as Section 1.1 explains, is codification and synthesis of best-of-breed social science models within PMFserv to improve the internal validity of the agent implementations. Sections 2 and 3 present this for leader profiling instruments and group membership decision-making, respectively. Section 4 then offers two real world case studies (The Third Crusade and SE Asia today) where the agent models are subjected to Turing and correspondence tests under each case study. In sum, substantial effort on game realism, best-of-breed social science models, and agent validation efforts is essential if analysis and training tools are to help explore cultural issues and alternative ways to influence outcomes. Such exercises, in turn, are likely to improve the state of the science as well

Constraints and autonomy for creativity in extracurricular gamejams and curricular assessment

The engagement observed by the players of the games that they play is a desirable quality that has not gone unnoticed in the field of education, leading to concepts such as gamification of education, game-based learning and serious games for training. Game designer Sid Meier is often cited as defining games as being ‘a series of interesting decisions’. The concept of choice implies an autonomous selection from a constrained set of options. This article reflects on the impact of autonomy and constraints, and extrinsic and intrinsic motivators on students’ software development work during both curricular and extracurricular activities. Finally, a model for the design of games for game-based learning is proposed in terms of autonomy and constraints with respect to learning outcomes

Serious Games for Training Myoelectric Prostheses through Multi-Contact Devices

In the medical context, designing and developing myoelectric prostheses has made it possible for patients to regain mobility lost due to amputations; however, their use requires intensive training. Serious games through multi-touch devices can serve as a complement to the activities carried out during face-to-face sessions with occupational therapists and physiotherapists, as a useful resource to engage patients, especially children, and make them enjoy training. In this paper, we describe our work to support the training of myoelectric prostheses through digital serious games. Firstly, we studied the needs of children with myoelectric prostheses and the way they perform rehabilitation. Secondly, we designed specific games to support training accordingly. Thirdly, we developed a system able to generate variations of these games dynamically, adapting the elements at each round to the needs and progress of each child. The interfaces are simple, friendly, and based on tablets to favor autonomy. Finally, we assessed the potential of the use of these games for rehabilitation. Specialists in Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Medicine and Special Education collaborated as experts; they agreed that SilverTouch is good for myoelectric prosthetic training and confirmed its potential to be widely used in this context.This research was co-funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, project IndiGo! number PID2019-105951RB-I00 and the Structural Funds FSE and FEDER, project e-MadridCM number S2018/TCS-4307

Beyond simulations : serious games for training interpersonal skills in law enforcement

Serious games can be used to improve people's social awareness by letting them experience difficult social situations and learn from these experiences. However, we assert that, when moving beyond the strict realism that social simulations offer, techniques from role play may be used that offer more possibilities for feedback and reflection. We discuss the design of two such serious games for interpersonal skills training in the domain of law enforcement. These games feature intelligent virtual agents with which trainees have to interact across different scenarios to improve their social awareness. By interacting with the virtual agents, trainees experience how their behaviour influences the course of the intervention and its outcomes. We discuss how we intend to improve the learning experience in these serious games by including meta-techniques from role play. We close by describing the current and future implementations of our serious games

Beyond simulations: serious games for training interpersonal skills in law enforcement

Serious games can be used to improve people’s social awareness by letting them experience difficult social situations and learn from these experiences. However, we assert that, when moving beyond the strict realism that social simulations offer, techniques from role play may be used that offer more possibilities for feedback and reflection. We discuss the design of two such serious games for interpersonal skills training in the domain of law enforcement. These games feature intelligent virtual agents with which trainees have to interact across different scenarios to improve their social awareness. By interacting with the virtual agents, trainees experience how their behaviour influences the course of the intervention and its outcomes. We discuss how we intend to improve the learning experience in these serious games by including meta-techniques from role play. We close by describing the current and future implementations of our serious games

An architecture supporting the development of serious games for scenario-based training and its application to Advanced Life Support

The effectiveness of serious games for training has already been proved in several domains. A major obstacle to the mass adoption of serious games comes from the difficulties in their development, due to the lack of widely adopted architectures that could streamline their creation process. In this thesis we present an architecture supporting the development of serious games for scenario-based training, a serious games for medical training we developed exploiting the architecture and the results of a study about its effectivenes

The gamification of cybersecurity training

Due to the rapidly and continued evolving nature of technology, there is a constant need to update police officers’ training in cyber security to ensure that the UK continues to be a secure place to live and do business. Rather than deliver traditional classroom-based training, our project assesses the effectiveness of the delivery of cyber security through the use of games based learning to simulate cybercrimes and provide training in incident response. The aim of our research is to transform the delivery of first responder training in tackling cybercrime.Through the use of a Game Jam and subsequent prototype development, we have trialed training materials that are based on serious games technology. The game poses a common incident reported to the police, for example the problem of a virtual person receiving offensive messages via Facebook and the training reflects the dialogue with that person and the technical steps to ensure that a copy of the evidence has been preserved for further investigation. Evaluation has been conducted with local police officers. Overall, this approach to the large-scale provision of training (potentially to a whole force) is shown to offer potential

Video game self-efficacy and its effect on training performance

This study examined the effects of using serious games for training on task performance and declarative knowledge outcomes. The purpose was to determine if serious games are more effective training tools than traditional methods. Self-efficacy, expectations for training, and engagement were considered as moderators of the relationship between type of training and task performance as well as type of training and declarative knowledge. Results of the study offered support for the potential of serious games to be more effective than traditional methods of training when it comes to task performance

Growth of Military Operational Research in India .

Operational Research has contributed substantially to decisions on cost-effective induction of weapon systems, evaluation of tactical plans, development of computerised war games for training, realistic formulation of General Staff Qualitative Requirements, performance and reliability evaluation of military hardware under design and development, force structure, planning and other tactical and strategic issues in Indian defence. This paper reviews the work in Military OR initiated by Professor DS Kothari, the first Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Defence, and brings out the role it can play in defence decision making

Open Source 3D Game Engines for Serious Games Modeling

In this chapter we will review some tools and open source Game Engines used for modeling of real scenarios in serious games for training. One of the typical uses of serious games (3D serious games) is specialized training in dangerous tasks or when the training is quite expensive. However, typical games use artificial scenarios, created by artists and created according to the restrictions imposed by the Game engine used. In our experience, some tasks require the use of a real scenario like a city, forest area, etc, and most of this information is available as Digital Terrain Models in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The problem here is that GIS formats are not compatible with 3D formats used in Game engines. Then we have to solve the problem of convert the GIS format to a 3D format supported by the Game Engine