More than 25 representatives from eight USC schools will discuss the present and future of videogame research and technology — and its role in higher education — in a Games Summit at USC Oct. 20-21.

USC has emerged in recent years as one of the nation’s major centers for academic study and teaching of the subject both because its Los Angeles location puts it at the creative heart of the $12-billion interactive game industry and because of intensive efforts by numerous faculty to use, teach or develop videogame techniques.

“We now have so many people working in all aspects of this field that an important university-wide program of research and education can be identified,” said Vice Provost for Research Cornelius Sullivan, whose office is sponsoring the event.

“We believe this will be an exceptional occasion for intensive intellectual cross fertilization among USC colleagues, a chance to take stock of where we are and to think creatively about where we want to go,” Sullivan said.

The panels will include discussions of:

• Games for education. Examples include a videogame that will soon be teaching Arabic to soldiers; “immersive technology” that will let biology students explore a human body from the inside, as if they were the size of a cell; and other games teaching Newtonian mechanics.

• Observing the game player: Techniques for using subtle clues coming from the player’s manipulation of the computer controls to heighten game performance and even to diagnose and treat mental illness in the participant.

• Social issues of gaming, including the impact of game-simulated sex and violence on participants, and on society as a whole.

• Robots to play with and against: The use of artificial intelligence (AI) agent technology to create game characters that can react as if they were autonomous individuals.

• Gaming on a giant scale: What happens when games are written and played not on a PC, X-Box or PlayStation, but on linked supercomputers with massive processing power.

• The third sense: Experiments on adding tactile sensations to the traditional sight and sound, for surgical training and other uses.

• How to build games – and how to teach students to build them. The latest techniques from researchers, including a USC School of Cinema-TV team that wrote one of the very first textbooks in the field.

A roundtable closing discussion will bring together industry representatives to discuss collaboration with USC to develop and advance the technology in video games and simulations.

Participating schools, departments and organized research groups include the Annenberg School for Communication’s Games Research Group; the School of Cinema-Television’s Interactive Media Division; the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences; the Keck School of Medicine of USC; the Viterbi School of Engineering’s computer science department, Integrated Media Systems Center, Information Sciences Institute and Information Technology Programs and the Institute for Creative Technology; the Rossier School of Education; the School of Fine Arts; the Behavioral Technologies Laboratory; and the Mobile Media Institute.

Tim Langdell of the Viterbi School’s Information Technology Program chaired the Games Summit steering committee. The other members were Anthony Borquez (ITP), Chris Swain (CNTV), Lewis Johnson (ISI), Scott Fisher (CNTV), Victor LaCour (IMSC) and Bill Swartout (ICT).

The event, in the Vineyard Room at the Davidson Conference Center, is free and open to members of the USC community, but space is limited and reservations are strongly suggested. Email GamesSummit@itp.usc.edu, or go to
http://www.GamesSummit.org for a complete program schedule.