Fourteen serious games designed for use in K12 or higher education have been cited for excellence in the 2018 International Serious Play Award Program. Entries in the competition doubled and judges cited vast improvement in the quality of the serious games entries over 2018.
Gold Medals were awarded to:
• Slice Fractions 2, an intuitive puzzle game from Ululab that lets K12 students discover important fractions concepts, built in cooperation with the UQAM university
• To Be a Whale, an educational exploration game created by from Lohika ApS where K12 students learn to code by controlling the movements of a baby humpback whale
• Innovation Simulation: Breaking News, a simulation from Harvard Business Publishing about managing innovation for courses in entrepreneurship, innovation, product development, strategy, operations or organizational behavior
Silver Medal status went to:
• RaboPinPin, an augmented reality app that teaches kids how to deal with money in a safe, gamified and innovative way from &ranj and &samhoud media
• Read to Lead, a literacy and leadership game created by Classroom, Inc. that helps middle school students learn to take on responsibility in a virtual workplace where they must sort out and tackle problems and consider multiple perspectives
• Garfield’s Count Me In, a game created by Grendel Games for children with learning disabilities that teaches most elementary math subjects without the help of a teacher or parent
• Spellers, a creature-capture game created by Affordance Studio in cooperation with Alloproof, a tutoring service, that teaches English as a second language (ESL)
• Econland, a simulation game and learning platform that supports the teaching of Macroeconomics. In Econland, students manage the economy of a country by making Monetary and Fiscal Policy decisions in the context of the ups and downs of the global economy. Published by Integrity Media FZ LLE.
Bronze Medal recognition went to:
• Sankofa, a middle school game that teach students about a culturally significant African culture, the Asante of Ghana, created by the University of California – Irvine
• Luther, a mobile game created by Target Games that allows children to learn the history the reformer Martin Luther and experience the challenges of the late Middle Ages
• SYSTEMS-Virtual Vet, a game that equips children with knowledge allowing them to make better food and life choices, from the University of George College of Education
• IBiome-Ocean, created by SpringBay Studio, a game to inform a generation of children to help them make a difference in our ocean habitats and species preservation
• Excavate! designed for use by social studies teachers teaching world history topics that teaches children about the scientific process of excavation from Dig-IT! Games
• Kitchen King, a game teaching project planning, execution and financial control from Tata Interactive, developed for use at the Hult Business School. Players must manage a fictional commercial kitchen for a day
• First Impressions, a VR game that teaches conflict resolution from North Carolina State University. Participants learn to respond to a cross-cultural incident in a business situation, part of a course aimed at developing global management and leadership skills.
Winners will be given a chance to attend this summer’s Serious Play Conference Events and display their games. This year conferences will be held at George Mason University July 10-12, 2018 and University at Buffalo July 17-19. For more information, go to www.seriousplay-dc.com and to www.seriousplay-ny.com