As reported by Jason Hill at Screenplay, a package of free online games for children with autism has received an accolade in the Victorian Government’s 2010 Premier’s Design Awards.

Whizkid Games was created by a group of final year multimedia design students from Swinburne’s Faculty of Design in collaboration with Swinburne’s National eTherapy Centre (NeTC) and Bulleen Heights Autism School.  Whizkid Games aims to help autistic children learn life skills. Focusing on areas such as coping with change, recognising emotions and non-verbal communication, the 16 therapeutic games are themed around everyday activities such as getting dressed, going to school and following a schedule.

To read the article, click here

Over at itnews.com.au, Liz Tay reports that the Australian game development industry is getting ’serious’ about software development for medical, military and educational purposes.

According to the iGEA commissioned 2009 Bond University report, 68 percent of Australians play computer games.  This is a market Ben Kilsby, CEO of simulation company Holopoint Interactive, is keen to address.  Kilsby defines ’serious gaming’ as the application of video game methodology and technology for “purposes that are not entirely entertainment”.

Describing a generation of non-linear thinkers who are becoming decision makers in the workforce, Kilsby expects a new wave of serious games for training and education.

To read about some OS applications, click here

Jason Hill at Screenplay writes that there is no doubt that games have a huge potential in terms of learning and education.  Last week Dr Jeff Brand held a public lecture called ‘Video Games and The Future of the Knowledge Economy’.  Dr Brand believes Australia can become a world leader in developing Serious Games for Teaching and Learning.

To see the article, click here

 A Melbourne High School has recently introduced Game Design, a Year 10 elective subject, where students create games using industry standard tools.

Director of information and communication technology (ICT) , Adrian Janson is the man behind the subject.  He is embracing new technology and using the world of gaming to increase engagement amongst students, and is having a bit of fun at the same time.

 His Game Design class involves Year 10 students learning how to develop games using C# and XNA (a development platform for the Xbox 360).  Adrian has produced the materials for the class and has also been using some of the materials on the XNA Creator’s Club website, http://creators.xna.com/en-AU/.  Although C# has been challenging for Adrian’s students, they have been highly engaged, programming in a language that they know is used in the industry.

Adrian has eased the learning curve by creating tutorials which take students step by step through the game creation process.  By the end of the semester, students are building simple 2D arcade games with full animation, multimedia and multiplayer features.

Adrian has been teaching programming for 18 years and has been using games in the classroom for about 10.  Whilst he has taught a number of programming languages in that time, this is the first time that he has used tools that have enabled his students to write games for a console.  Having access to tools such as these has created a dynamic classroom environment where students are highly engaged and excited.   

Adrian spends time introducing his students to the theory of game design, including discussing a history of the gaming industry and the different genres that exist.  His students have definite ideas as to what makes a good game, with some of them stating the need for a good story and concept, or that the games should be multiplayer so that it’s different every time you play.

Commenting on his elective subject Adrian said:

“In the past, we‘ve used lots of different tools, but there’s always been a disconnect between what we’ve been doing in the classroom and what happens in the industry.  This new class using the Xbox 360 has taken everything to a new level.  It’s not like I’m telling students ‘Ok let’s make a tic-tac-toe game.’  Suddenly, we are doing something legitimate. We’re writing a game for the Xbox 360 – the kids go bananas.”

Adrian’s classes are a great start to a positive future for the games industry with many students considering studying the subject further.  Whilst most of his students came into the class with no programming knowledge they leave with a new found understanding and admiration for the industry.

Kotaku Australia reports that Melbourne’s Firemint took home the gong for Best Game at the GDAA”s Industry Awaards Night with their iPhone release Flight Control.

A full list of winners are at Kotaku AU here.

GameSpot AU has a feature that looks at the problems arising from morality systems in video games, and seeks to answer why morality is needed in games, why moral choice is so often just black and white, and what developers can do to change this. In Part One of the feature they speak to philosophers and game theorists.

To read Part One of Laura Parker’s feature, take the jump here.

To read Part Two of Laura Parker’s feature, take the jump here.

ABC TV and Screen Australia have announced that the Serious Game, Alternator, – a full-throttle car race in wild and whacky green-powered vehicles – will receive $325,000 and go into full production immediately.

To read more of the blog from ABC TV blog click here.

Largely invisible to the mainstream, sightless gamers help each other tackle titles like Rock Band and Left 4 Dead, while others focus on games made for–and by–the blind.

Read the full article by Matthew Peters at GameSpot AU

David Giles is the Director of Development at gaming company Tantalus Media. David talks about the impacts of piracy to PC gaming development and the wider gaming community.

1. How many employees does your organisation employ locally?
We have between 50 and 60 staff at the moment. We also outsource on a regular basis to other local development studios and if you count them into the mix we move up to about 70 to 80.

2. Can you provide us examples of games that have been wholly or partly developed by your organisation in Australia?
Top Gear: Downforce, MX vs ATV Untamed, Pony Friends, Cars Mater National, The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon.

3. Can you give us a profile of a typical gaming developer in your organisation?
Well, I guess you could split the developers into four groups the first being the game designers. These are people that come up with the game ideas and focus in on exactly how the game will work before any art or code has been produced. The designers look beyond the cool factor in games and focus on what makes the game cool.

Next we have programmers and artists. The programmers usually have programming degrees from University and have decided that games are their passion rather than databases. The artists all work in 3D but many have strong illustration backgrounds before they moved into 3D. Artists as programmers may specialise in different areas with the game development cycle.

The last general group are the producers they are responsible for managing the game project from start to finish. Their general mandate is quality on time.

4. How does gaming piracy directly impact you?
The Australian industry is not a huge one and every time a game is downloaded and copied it can have a significant impact on our local game developers. So much so that PC game development is very rarely carried out by Australian game developers these days because publishers are more cautious about its chance of succeeding financially partly due to the rampant pirating of titles.

Once upon a time a small Australian development team could work on a PC title and make enough to live off, that avenue is fairly well closed now.

5. What would you want gaming pirates to know?
If we want the Australian game industry to survive and grow then it needs to be financially profitable. Every time a game is pirated it puts all of the industry at risk even more so for the fledgling Australian game development community.

Steve Fawkner is the founder of Infinite-Interactive, a video game development company based in Melbourne. Steve has taken time out of his busy schedule to chat about gaming piracy and how it is preventing developers from creating cutting edge, innovative games.

1. How many employees does your organisation employ locally?
We have almost 50 people here full time, and a number of contractors. This could be anywhere from 5-20 people depending on the stage of production that we are in with our projects.

2. Can you provide us examples of games that have been wholly or partly developed by your organisation in Australia?
Our most recent releases have been Puzzle Quest: Galactrix and Neopets: Puzzle Adventure on DS, Wii, PC, Xbox 360 and PS3. Our most notable release of recent years was probably Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. This game has won a whole raft of Game of the Year awards.

Our releases stretch right back to 1989 when we released the original Warlords strategy game, the first of a series with over 10 sequels.

3. Can you give us a profile of a typical games developer in your organisation?
Our developers tend to fall into three categories. There are the software engineers who generally have the same qualifications as any member of a programming team in the IT industry. There are the artists who work either as illustrators or 3D modellers/texturers/animators. Their backgrounds tend to vary widely, not all of them have any formal qualifications, although most do nowadays. Finally, there is the design and production staff, who quite often come from a technical background. Their responsibilities mostly revolve around making sure everything gets done and that the games are fun to play.

I’ve painted some pretty broad strokes there – within each discipline are many niches and sub-disciplines that are quite distinct from each other.

4. How does gaming piracy directly impact you?
Gaming piracy has made the PC a totally unviable platform for us. Piracy can be performed in such a casual manner today that it is often easier to pirate a game than to buy it. We have moved into the casual game space on consoles and handheld systems to get away from all the piracy.

Piracy began to impact us in 1995 when the first CD-ROM burners became commonplace. We toughed it out for another nine years but it got progressively worse until we had to relegate PC games to second place in 2004.

5. What would you want gaming pirates to know?
It’s really simple. You’re harming innovation. Developers don’t make much money even if they are successful. Most of us are here because we love creating games. The harder life is for us developers, the more we have to play it safe, and the less innovative games you see each year.

I don’t believe that piracy will ever actually kill PC gaming, I’m not that naive and would never try to tell anybody as much, but it WILL reduce the number of titles available down to a few AAA releases every year along with all the shovelware that gets bundled together cheaply. That whole spectrum of really interesting experimental games that you once saw on PC have mostly vanished already. It would be really sad to see them gone altogether.

To those pirates who say “if you wrote good games, you wouldn’t care about piracy”, I say “then why do you still pirate good games?”