Gaming in the Department of Defense | Alicia SANCHEZ

This session will provide an overview of the initial launch of the first ever Department of Defense (DoD) Casual Games site at Defense Acquisition University (DAU), the DoD's premier corporate university. DAU recognized that their student base, the acquisition workforce was demographically similar to the players of games within the casual games industry and seized the opportunity to provide games that are based wholly on acquisition principles to them in a casual gameplay setting.

DAUs goal was to provide low level acquisition concepts that the entire acquisition community of 147,000 civilians and military service members would be familiar enough with to learn from and play successfully and to wrap those games into a website that those students would expect to have in their non-educational casual games experiences. Those expectations include being able to collect achievements and badges for their play, to rate the games, to make comments about the games, to save their favorites and to compete when possible using leader boards.

The site launched with 13 games and received over 100,000 hits in its first month. DAU plans to release a new game on the site each month. The games range from a diner dash style game on the acquisition life cycle and a Bond style game about contracting, to a choose your adventure style game on procurement fraud. Each of the games on the site were designed to be easy to learn how to use, easy to play and to last approximately 10 minutes in legnth. While some of the games on the site were developed specifically for the purpose being used here, several of the games come from DAU's two other award winning games initiatives. The site includes games that represent each of the major acquisition functional areas including general acquisition, logistics, contracting, business cost & finance and systems engineering. Each game's primary focus is increasing the retention and engagement between learners and content. DAU expects the acquisition workforce to use and enjoy using these games and therefore have learning opportunities wherever they are.


For slides visit: http://casualconnect.org/lectures/design/gaming-in-the-department-of-defense-...

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Alicia SANCHEZ
• Department of Defense
• Casual Connect Seattle 2011