By Kenny Chee

THE next time your company sends you for training, you might be playing a video game.

Some Fortune 500 companies are already using games to train their workers overseas. For example, Canon in the United States uses a game to get its new copier technicians to drag and drop parts into the correct spots of a virtual copier.

But this has not been widely adopted here, said the Media Development Authority?s (MDA) senior director for special programmes, Mr Thomas Lim.

Games can make learning more effective as they are interactive and have tangible objectives, he explained.

Learning conducted via media platforms like video games, newspapers and television is something that the MDA wants to promote through a new, broader initiative called Media in Learning.

Among other things, the agency will encourage the development and use of more educational games to help students learn, and to teach workers skills, possibly by providing co-funding. More details will be given by next month.

This new move was announced yesterday by Acting Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, Rear-Admiral (NS) Lui Tuck Yew, at the opening of Games Convention Asia.

The MDA is taking up this initiative as video games have become increasingly popular here. Some schools have already seen success while using them to teach students over the past three years, said Mr Lim.

The National Heritage Board is also jumping on the bandwagon. It is co-funding the creation of a $1.35 million 3-D online game called the World Of Temasek, which will educate the public on Singapore?s history, the game?s developer, Singapore-based Magma Studios, said yesterday.

The game recreates 14th-century Singapore, complete with accurate topology, artefacts like the Singapore Stone and characters like rich merchant Wang Dayuan, who wrote one of the earliest accounts of the island?s history.

Players can take on roles like traders and warriors, and go on quests. The game is slated to be ready by October next year, and will be free for the public to play, for at least two years.

The setting up of two new videogames research-and-development centres was also announced yesterday at the convention.

The first is a $30 million centre co-funded by the Government and run by global maker of gaming peripherals Razer. It will work on improving gaming equipment.

The second is a centre at Singapore Polytechnic, set up by the school and Epic Games China with the help of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore.

The centre will develop games using the game firm's 3-D game software.

kennyc@sph.com.sg

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