History
- Preparations for launching the topic area got going in September 2006 with the appointment of Swen Stoop and Andy Turner as editors charged with developing both Web Content and a community of readers and contributors.
- In December 2006 the first Web Home Page was linked as a DS Online topic area.
Scope
- The topic area subtitle ‘Applications for Entertainment, Education, and Modeling’ gives some idea of the current focus. Although we have a focus, we are broadly interested in both games and simulation as individual topics involving interests which may not neccesarily overlap and welcome any contribution.
More about the editors
- Swen Stoop
- Swen has been gaming with serious games for most of his life, easily learning a whole course at university level in about one week. (Ok, its just a little exaggeration, but only a little; games can really be that good in the transfer of knowledge and understanding). Since this realization struck he endeavored to understand, and help others understand, how, why and when games can be effective in serious applications. Currently he works in the T-Xchange Cell at Twente Univeristy where he uses games to facilitate innovative design processes.
- Andy
Turner
- A computational geographer and open eResearcher based at the
Centre for Computational Geography,
School of Geography,
University of Leeds.
- Likes to think he has a balanced life and awareness of much of what goes on in different spheres.
- Appreciates games and much of his work focuses on geographic modeling and simulation.
- Has a background in mathematics and a general interest in science and information.
- Believes that there is much that can be gained by collaboration between the entertainments industry, academia, government and the public in developing the next generation decision support systems as we try to plan and react to our changing environment.
- Is aligned to support you and Swen as we develop our Games and Simulation Topic Area.
- On Games:
- Games and human society go hand in hand.
- Society would not be the same without games and they are integral to most people’s lives.
- Many skills can be involved and developed in the processes of imagining, designing, learning to play and playing games.
- Games are a general way of exercising our brains, they can be useful for training, and they are important for social interaction.
- Games are changing and the mass use of computerized information technology for playing games has a reasonably short history.
- Andy has grown up playing computer games and is continually amazed and delighted at the development of information technology in general.
- On Modeling and simulation
- These are important processes that are being focused in attempts to understand and explain our origins, our past and present, forecast our future and consider our destiny.
- Andy has developed models to predict and forecast land use and demographic change, visualize the relationships between geographic variables, and develop user interfaces in a range of research projects.
- These projects have focused on contemporary issues, but Andy is interested in other applications and in modeling technology in general.
- Andy is interested in the fabric of reality, the environment, the development of human society, and our exploitation of resources.
- Andy is a fan of simulation games, especially those that are geographical, including; SimEarth, SimCity, Civilisation and FreeCiv.
Metadata
- Version 0.0.5
- Published 2007-02-15