The Serious Games Summit at GDC 2004 coming up March 25-26

. The Serious Games Summit is a two-day event at the upcoming Game Developers Conference covering the intersection of games, learning, policy, and management. Today, major corporations, government and military institutions, foundations, educators, and non-profits are turning to interactive technologies as an approach to problem solving. The result is a new field where computer and video games are applied to "serious" purposes rather than entertainment. This represents a growing financial outlet for game developers, where projects can produce a social return in addition to an economic one.

The Serious Games Summit agenda is designed to address areas of concern to professional developers who want to develop new business in this emerging market; educators and gaming advocates looking at new ways to utilize interactive game technologies; and representatives from corporations, the government and non-government organizations who are looking to fund and utilize game projects to advance specific needs.

Attendees of the Serious Games Summit will learn how extensive the application of games and game technology is and can be outside of the traditional use of entertainment. Attendees will also gain considerable hands-on insight on how to successfully launch new serious game projects and advance things beyond the experiments and pioneering endeavors that have taken place so far. This includes developers learning how to attack new markets, and potential users obtaining a much deeper level of understanding on how to make their projects, past, present, and future much more successful.

Ben Sawyer was the producer for The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's Virtual U project. He is the co-leader of the Serious Games Initiative, and works on a number of game-based projects via his Portland, ME based firm Digitalmill. His Op-Ed piece, "Gaming Our Way to Our Better Future," appeared in the June 2003 issue of Game Developer magazine. Sawyer is also the volunteer producer of the Serious Games Summit. Here is an interview with him: