BS

Absolutely. I'll describe one short one, and a longer one. The short one is America's Army. The office in charge of developing and promoting America's Army says the total cost is 1/3 of 1% of their total advertising budget and it's by far dollar-for-dollar the BEST money they've ever spent. People should get a true walk through of the game because until you do you don't have any idea how well it tells the story of what it means to be an Army infrantryman. The game codifies the Army's practices and honor principles and, as I've seen when I sat for a walk through, it really does make it easier for potential recruits to sit down and understand what is headed their way. Today, almost 20% of the Cadets at West Point have played America's Army before they got there. That's surely going up and I'd suspect on the regular grunt side the story is the same.

The longer story I'd tell is about a new product currently under development at Breakaway Games which is a well known commercial game house based in Hunt Valley, MD. Breakaway is doing a game called Incident Commander for the Justice Department, which will help municipalities and county governments around the country simulate virtual incidents like a chlorine gas spill, or a school shooting, and they must respond. You can block roads, call in EMTs, evacuate areas, call in federal agencies and more. Think of it as SimCity's disaster mode on steroids. Unlike basic training, which you can do without a computer, Incident Commander lets you simulate things that are hard to do in real life. Disaster drills are expensive to do and many localities can't afford them. 75% of the nations firefighters and EMTs are volunteer departments. For the first time, these people, people we count on daily to keep us safe, will be able to use a product from a game developer and practice their decision-making response skills in a game-like environment. I think we'll see an updated version at the Summit and Doug Whatley, CEO of Breakaway will be speaking on the design panel.