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  • 2007 Serious Games Summit GDC: Jane McGonigal On ilovebees, ARGs This latest Serious Games Source feature covers a keynote by alternate reality game creator Jane McGonigal presented during the recent 2007 Serious Games Summit, during which she stated “I design games from the future,” and offered insight into the creation of Halo 2 ARG ilovebees.
  • Serious Game Engine Shootout In the march up to the Serious Games Shootout panel to take place in March during the Serious Games Summit in San Francisco, writer Richard Carey presents a comparative analysis of several prominent engines currently used for developing serious games, as well as quotes from the companies behind the technologies.
  • Playing with Fire: Enemy Dolls In this latest Playing with Fire feature, Powerful Robot Games' Gonzalo Frasca offers his unique insight into the perception of conflict in games, as well as in other media, and notes how looking at events through the eyes of the opposition could lead to better understanding.
Nvidia, UW Team For SnowWorld Pain Management Game[12.21.06]

Officials from graphics card firm Nvidia have announced that the company has teamed up with the University of Washington's Harborview Burn Center and Seattle based Imprint Interactive for new technology involving a virtual reality system known as SnowWorld, which aims to mitigate pain for burn victims.

SnowWorld was developed using Nvidia's graphics technology, and is touted as the first immersive virtual world designed for reducing pain. In the game, patients are helped to forget about their real world pain by immersing themselves in SnowWorld's virtual alternative. The system offers an interactive journey through an icy 3D canyon, as players throw snowballs at anything they see, from snowmen and flocks of penguins, to even woolly mammoths.

The SnowWorld system was developed at the University of Washington's Virtual Reality Research Center in collaboration with Harborview Burn Center and Imprint Interactive Technology, and was recently selected by the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum to be part of a new display titled "Design Life Now: National Design Triennial 2006." The exhibit will run through July 29, 2007, and more information can be found on the official website.

"Virtual reality pain distraction results are very encouraging and a growing number of burn centers around the world are now using SnowWorld with their patients," commented Dr. Hunter Hoffman, a cognitive psychologist and director of the University of Washington's Virtual Reality Research Center.

By Jason Dobson
December 21, 2006 10:17:00 AM PT