Sawyer To Talk Serious Games At EIEF

Organizers of this year's Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival (EIEF) today confirmed that Ben Sawyer, who serves as co-director of both the Serious Games Initiative and Games for Health, has been added as a featured speaker at the Scottish event, taking place in late August. Sawyer's lecture, entitled “Games That Heal – the medicine of interactive software”, will be delivered on August 21 and will discuss the possibility of games – not laughter – being the best medicine. The talk's description reads: “It’s a little known fact that interactive software is now routinely used in hospitals and endorsed by doctors. With the conference kicking off at the Royal College of Physicians we take the opportunity to examine how games are being used to help patients with conditions ranging from cancer to post-traumatic stress disorder.” Other offerings from the serious games space include “Learning isn’t a game”, which will take place on August 22, and will offer a visual presentation which will showcase the latest and most innovative ways in which games, learning and education co-exist. Further information on the event, which takes place as part of the larger performance and theater-oriented Edinburgh Festival, can be found at the EIEF official website, and sister website Gamasutra will have write-ups of a number of these sessions as they occur.