Games Summit to Map State of the Art
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.
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USC in the News
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The Chronicle of Higher Education mentioned USC’s $6 billion fundraising campaign. The story noted that USC had already raised $1 billion in a “quiet phase,” including the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College.
The Guardian (U.K.) highlighted two major gifts to USC in a list of the 10 biggest philanthropic benefactors in America. The list included the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College, and the $110 million gift from USC Trustee and USC Viterbi School alumnus John Mork and wife Julie to create the USC Mork Family Scholars Program.
The New York Times featured the USC U.S.-China Institute documentary “Assignment: China — The Week that Changed the World.” The documentary, part of a series, examines media coverage of the 1972 Nixon trip that reshaped U.S.-China relations after a quarter century of isolation and hostility. “People look back now and take it for granted that the outcome was preordained,” said the institute’s Mike Chinoy, who produced the documentary. Voice of America also featured the story.
Los Angeles Times featured the Oscar Senti-meter, a tool developed by the USC Annenberg School, Los Angeles Times and IBM that analyzes thousands of tweets about the Academy Awards nominees. The story noted that Mexican actor Demian Bechir received an enormous boost on Twitter the day of the nominations, with a total of 6,893 tweets mentioning him, a 47-fold increase from the day before. The story noted the tool uses language-recognition technology developed in collaboration with USC Viterbi School’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab.
The Times of India (India) featured a three-day medical emergency training workshop organized in association with USC. At the workshop, held at GCS Medical College in India, 50 doctors and more than 100 paramedics learned how to improve emergency support systems. William Mallon of the Keck School of USC said that discussion topics included the use of portable ultrasonic devices to scan patients. “The ultrasound applications help physicians make accurate and timely decisions,” he noted. Daily News & Analysis (India) also featured the workshop.
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