Knowledge Oasis Muscat launches eGames

Held under the patronage of HE Maqbool bin Ali Sultan, Minister of Commerce & Industry, eGames will be be held on the Rusayl-based technology park from 31st March - 1st April and is the Gulf region's only annual serious gaming conference.

David Wortley, Director of the Serious Games Institute at Conference University and a presenter at eGames said: "KOM's eGames event illustrates clearly the Omani government's interest in the serious games market and its applications to sectors such as tourism, heritage and culture, health, defence and education."

The serious games movement has opened up a hitherto-untapped pool of expertise to the global interactive 3D community as a whole, enabling the industry to exploit multidisciplinary skills in arts, science and technology, heritage and human factors. "Indeed, if we take on board the lessons learned from the highs and lows of the virtual reality experiences of the 1990s, then serious gaming is set to revolutionise the way in which Oman attracts tourists, promotes its cultural assets, teaches its medical students and trains its military personnel. Looking at tourism and heritage in particular," adds Wortley, "it's more than apparent what serious games technology could do in helping Oman raise its international profile," comments Wortley.

Meanwhile, Susie Houh of Ericsson endorses serious games in corporate training, by saying: "Serious games represent the next evolutionary step in the field of technology-enabled learning, bringing new levels of engagement, motivation and context to the learning process. However, serious games aren't just about advancing learning through technology, they're also about unlocking business advantage through creating effective training programmes that can be deployed faster and enable staff to perform better. Ericsson is thrilled to be involved with eGames and given the line-up of highly-experienced European and US speakers I fully expect this year's event to be a tremendous success."

"As a global leader in creative gaming and arts education, we're very excited to play an integral role in this year's eGames Conference," says Professor Lizbeth Goodman, Founder and Director of the SMARTlab Digital Media Institute and the MAGIC Multimedia and Games Innovation Centre, Gamelab and PLAYroom at the University of East London. "This is an international event delivered exclusively by serious and mobile games experts who are targetting the tourism, heritage, culture, health, defence and education sectors. In particular, the two-day program offers Oman's public sector a really exciting opportunity to learn more about serious games and understand how it can help promote the sultanate's rich heritage and tourism offer as well as take education and corporate training to a new level."