We presented this game at the Center for Design Innovation (CDI) and the next day at a panel discussion of the Triangle Game Conference in Raleigh NC on April, 2010.
From May 2009 until February 2010, I oversaw a team of educators, consultants, and students in the creation of a serious game funded by the Piedmont Triad Partnership through a Department of Labor WIRED grant. I developed the project’s purpose, which was to gauge the likely success of an area educators and game professionals collaboration starting with a core team of educators from one public high school and eight colleges and universities from the region. About 35 people eventually worked on the project.
The core team was augmented by specialists and professionals as needed. The core team worked and communicated online using Skype, Facebook and Google apps which were novel work methods for most of the team. Many educators came from new programs and departments formed to reflect trends in animation, entertainment, game, and related media. Most had not worked with one another or on a commercial game project from beginning to end. One of the big challenges and successes was the team’s transition from a work style and culture characterized by close supervision, regulated activities and regular face-to-face meetings to a nimbler sharing, discussion, and decision-making process mediated by the Web.The Surgical Technology Skills Builder (STSB) is a Flash-based online serious game created to solve key memory, identification, spatial arrangement, and limited access problems experienced by surgical technology students studying at Guilford Technical Community College (GTCC). It was chosen by the core education team from 19 proposals solicited from the region...
The final product was as much bounded by the team’s technical and design abilities and experience as it was by members’ primary commitments to teaching, limited time frame, and budget (which in the end came close to commercial rates). While we deliberately chose conservative, proven solutions to design and production rather than tax the team’s abilities, the game’s components and production values were consistent with the objectives of the instructor, who also headed the surgical technology department.
He described some of the key obstacles students encountered in their training included rote memorization of hundreds of surgical instruments, their correct placement on the surgery room back table and Mayo tray, and prompt response to a surgeon’s request for instruments during surgery. These problems were analyzed and addressed through the game’s three distinct training modules: Identification game, Set Up game, and OR game (see above screen shots). Isolating and addressing learning barriers through a serious game employing limited capabilities (we opted for “2 1/2 D” and “limited immersion”) is not only effective but it keeps costs down. We followed the belief that not every serious game requires full 3D programming.
