Happy Holidays from Visual Purple
We would like to take this opportunity to wish all of our loyal blog readers and clients a wonderful holiday season and a prosperous new year!
2010 Hype Cycles- Where Do We Stand?
Once again it is that time of the year for the hype cycle projections to be released by Gartner. At the beginning of this year I highlighted a few thoughts on what virtual worlds held in store for 2010, while looking back at 2009. Click here to look back at last years predictions.
While the year has yet to come to a close the graph below represents public virtual worlds coming out of the trough of disillusionment and towards the slope of enlightenment with an overall projection of 5 to 10 years for mainstream adoption. My thought is that they will take less time to become mainstream, but I guess time will tell.
Study Shows Video Games Really Do Train People!
It’s finally out! Video games are actually highly effective training tools, something that Visual Purple and I have been lamenting all along- but nevertheless a reputable study is now out to back it up! The news broke in October in a write up in Science Daily – yes, we are remiss in not getting this out in front of you sooner.
Although in my mind the term ‘video games’ would throw most off from reading the article, I persevered and would rather change the title from reflecting ‘video games’ to that of ‘serious games.’ In the article entitled “Video Games Can be Highly Effective Training Tools, Study Shows: Employees Learn More, Forget Less, Master More Skills” a study from the University of Colorado Denver Business School established that those trained by video games do their jobs better, have higher skills and retain information longer than that of workers learning in a less interactive environment.
According to the article “Sitzmann spent over a year examining 65 studies and data from 6,476 trainees and discovered those using video games had an 11 percent higher factual knowledge level, a 14 percent higher skill-based knowledge level and a 9 percent higher retention rate than trainees in comparison groups.” The findings further confirm that video games/ serious games really do have a purpose in the workplace and can provide a great level of value to any organization that utilizes them to train.