UK’s British Midlands Embrace Serious Games

Serious games, which leverage traditional gaming technology for use in serious applications, have continued to garner interest from game development studios, including many of those based in the UK’s British Midlands, which is home to 25 percent of the country’s gaming presence. Among those companies based in the British Midlands are PIXELearning, which specializes in the application of game and simulation techniques and technologies for training and educational purposes. Another British Midlands firm, Blitz Games (Burger King adver-games), has also stepped into the serious games market with TruSim, the company's game-based training, visualization and learning division, which has already received contracts defense and civilian medical projects from the UK government. Also helping to spearhead the growth of the serious games market it he region is ongoing work coming out of the University of Birmingham. Professor Robert Stone, chair of Interactive Multimedia Systems at the University of Birmingham and research director for the Human Factors Integration Defence Technology Centre is working on a wide range of serious gaming programs and applications for the UK military and for other stakeholders. "The British Midlands has a critical mass of game developers and a very successful gaming industry," said Vern Sebby, president and CEO of government funded British Midlands Development Corporation, "Gaming is big business, but all indicators point to the fact that serious gaming will represent a larger market than traditional gaming."