Kara's Blog

 Posts Tagged ‘California’

 

Sarwat and me in the massive exhibit hall

Today, Sarwat and I split up to attend some different sessions.  I started off my day by going to an exciting keynote presentation given by the VP of Microsoft.  He had several guest programmers come on stage and show some new games and talked about really democratizing game play and development for people using XBox Live and Community.  Here, people can download the tools to create their own games and share them with over 10,ooo players, so it really blurs the line between player and professional.  I also attended a pretty interesting session on censorship, which presented the status of issues both in the US and in other countries.   So far, there hasn’t been much that’s been able to go through as far as censoring video games, besides the ‘mature audience’ labels, but some want to start taxing video games that they deem as being harmful to children.

My personal body guard– This one’s for my Dad

After our sessions, we walked around the large exhibit hall.  Besides getting our picture taken in space at the NASA booth, I also got very excited over this robotic dinosaur, ‘Pleo’.  Now this thing, isn’t just remote controlled or something, it has sensors all over it’s body, can see and hear, and will react w/ programmed emotions to various stimuli.  It was so awesome– you could pet it, pick it up like a baby, and it really responded.

 

Afterwards, Sarwat and I had a chance to walk around the sunny city, popping in and out of shops.  Now, I’m off to rest a bit before my overnight flight home.

See you back in CT,

Kara

 
Today Sarwat and I attended sessions as part of the Serious Games Summit. This summit shows how games are being used in non-entertainment sectors, such as education, military, science, and others. There were two sessions in particular, that I found very interesting.

One talked about a video game that incorporates motion sensors, such as the Wii controller to help make the Physical Therapy program for people w/ Parkinson’s Disease more interactive and motivating. The hope is that people, using this video game, that incorporates some movements from the Gait and Balance program, would be more likely to actually work on these exercises at home, rather than just doing the movements when they’re at PT. It was pretty neat, and they were talking how their next phases would be to help people who’ve had Strokes, and people with Cerebral Palsy. I was thinking, how wonderful it would be if they had these games on the monitors when you’re at the gym, because I’d definitely be more motivated to work out that way.

Another session that I found interesting, especially because my boyfriend does Disaster Preparedness with the Air National Guard was a training game called ‘Ground Truth’. It is a project that is being worked on by the Homeland Security Systems and Development Center and Sandia Nat’l Lab. This games sets up training simulations for things like chemical spills, or shooters, so that people in the position of decision making can practice critical thinking and strategizing how to respond efficiently and appropriately. You can also have multiplayers which would allow for more human interaction and real-like responses. It looked like an excellent tool, and I hope that people in these type of job sectors can start using this for training purposes.

My brother and sister would have loved this,– video game heaven

Tomorrow, we have another day of sessions and also get to check out the 300+ exhibitors. Hopefully, we’ll have some time afterwards to wander about the city a bit. Then, I’m off, and take an overnight flight back home.

Signing off,

Kara

So, yesterday I started my trip out to San Francisco, and in true Kara fashion, my flight was delayed due to severe weather in Atlanta.  Pretty much everyone was stuck there for the night, which must have been great for the area hotels. Anyway, I stayed at a nearby Marriott, and began early this morning to try, again, to make it to California.  Boy, I have never seen lines as long as they were here.  They literally had lines snaking around the outside of the airport, had to move us from north to south terminal, and then when you finally got inside the building, the lines wrapped in between baggage claims and restaurants. 

I should meet Sarwat sometime this afternoon at the Game Developers Conference in, hopefully- sunny, San Francisco.  It should be an interesting affair, and is pretty neat to be attending, rather than working a booth at this conference.  It looks like it’s an enormous event, so should get a lot of great information to help us with our own game developments and designs.  Should also get some pretty cool loot from all the exhibitors, which doesn’t hurt either