The Serious Games industry is rapidly expanding. There are a huge number of books, white papers, academic reports, conferences, portal sites and discussion boards devoted to the subject.

For those of you interested in finding out more about this exciting new medium we recommend that you visit the following information portals.

External web sites & portals

The Serious Games Institute

URL: www.seriousgames.org.uk [ visit this site ]

A UK regional government backed initiative which includes a physical showcasing and centre of excellence as well as a focus point for networking, contacts, research findings and much more.

West Midlands - Serious About Games

URL: www.seriousaboutgames.co.uk/home [ visit this site ]

This website is property of the Interactive Digital Media project, managed by Birmingham City University and funded by Advantage West Midlands. The project main objective is to establish the West Midlands as a key player in the emerging industry of Serious Games. The partners, Birmingham University, Coventry University and Warwick University, all have strong links to the serious games industry. This coupled with a strong group of games developers, puts the region in a position to drive the industry and is fast become the centre of the emerging industry in the UK, if not for Europe.

The project is actively pursuing organisations, both private and public, that wish to partner with and benefit from the region’s wealth of talent, resources and commitment to growing the Serious Games industry.

The Serious Games NING

URL: http://seriousgames.ning.com [ visit this site ]

A social networking portal - based on the freely available NING platform - that is a dedicated place for all things 'serious games'. With close to 1,000 members (as of June 2008), this portal provides RSS news feeds, many blogs, forums, member profiles, social networking tools, thousands of videos, audio files and images. PIXELearning's staff are members and can be found busily networking in this vibrant community of like-minded 'serious gamers'.

Serious Games Source

URL: www.seriousgamessource.com [ visit this site ]

This CMP owned, US-based portal is a good source of serious games news. It has a library of hundreds of articles and postings from many members. You will find several articles published by our CEO, Kevin Corti on this site.

Serious Games Initiative

URL: www.seriousgames.org [ visit this site ]

The Serious Games Initiative is focused on uses for games in exploring management and leadership challenges facing the public sector. Part of its overall charter is to help forge productive links between the electronic game industry and projects involving the use of games in education, training, health, and public policy.

The Serious Games Initiative's email-based discussion group is a source of very frequent discussions involving prominent serious games and related industry people - including PIXELearning team members - you can subscribe and participate from this link.

Watercooler games

URL: www.watercoolergames.org [ visit this site ]

"Water Cooler Games is a site about videogames with an agenda. It is about games that go beyond entertainment. Water Cooler Games explores the emerging field of games want to do more than simply being fun: they want to make a point, share knowledge, change opinions. This includes new genres such as advergaming, newsgaming, political games, simulations and edutainment. If you think that video games have a strong potential for communication, persuasion and education, come and join our discussion by the Water Cooler".

BLOGS

The Evil Number 27's Occasional Bivouac

URL: http://theevilnumber27.wordpress.com [ visit this site ]

Our own CEO's blog site covering serious games, immersive learning simulations and eLearning 2.0.

Future Making Serious Games

URL: http://elianealhadeff.blogspot.com [ visit this site ]

Eliane Alhadeff's personal blog described (by Eliane) as "The future of serious games that challenge us to play at building a better future".

Clark Aldrich's Style Guide for Serious Games and Simulations

URL: http://clarkaldrich.blogspot.com [ visit this site ]

Subtitled: " How the most valuable knowledge will be constructed and engaged in the era beyond Gutenberg and Google", this *very* expansive blog site was created by well-known simulation and eLearning market expert, author and public speaker Clark Aldrich.

I'm Serious.net

URL: http://imserious.typepad.com [ visit this site ]

Sub-titled "Serious Thoughts About Serious Games", this blog site/portal is co-managed by our very good friends Anne Derryberry and Michael Armentrout in San Francisco. It is well worth a visit.

BOOKS

"Learning by Doing"
by Clark Aldrich (2003)

"Learning by Doing: A Comprehensive Guide to Simulations, Computer Games, and Pedagogy in e-Learning and Other Educational Experiences"
by Clark Aldrich (2005)

'The small print'

Links to external websites

PIXELearning is not responsible for the content of external websites. This is because:

1. PIXELearning does not produce them or maintain/update them
2. PIXELearning cannot change them
3. they can be changed without PIXELearning's knowledge or agreement.
4. Some of our external links may be to websites which also offer commercial services, such as online purchases.

The inclusion of a link to an external website from the PIXELearning web site should not be understood to be an endorsement of that website or the site's owners (or their products/services).