Portfolio.com has featured our very own Jeffrey Hall (CCO) in their Job of the Week column:

If you’re a bomb-disposal technician, a hostage negotiator, or a suicide-prevention specialist, Jeffrey Hall has a game for you. Hall creates interactive movies for WILL Interactive, the Potomac, Maryland-based maker of experiential learning programs, which he helped found in 1994.

But Hall’s simulations don’t teach users the intricacies of dismantling bombs; his games are focused on ways to manage feelings and behaviors to get through situations most people are never formally trained to handle.

Read the full article here.

The Maryland Business Gazette is running a story on WILL Interactive and the Serious Game industry:

‘‘This is you,” says the voice in ‘‘Gator Six,” an interactive video filmed with live actors that’s used as a training tool for U.S. troops in Iraq.

‘‘You” — an Army artillery captain in the fictional nation of Ariana — ‘‘have just completed what turned out to be the last combat operation of the war,” the voice continues.

But before the troops can relax, ‘‘your” superior officer arrives by jeep and says he is ‘‘giving you a town”: Samara, population 13,000. He orders you to ‘‘pacify it, maintain order and prepare it for transition to democracy.” You have only 95 soldiers, who now must become town administrators.

The screen darkens. The voice asks you to make a pivotal decision: Do you set up outside of Samara and find out who’s in charge of the town? Or do you ‘‘roll in heavy,” to show you are in charge?

‘‘Gator Six” is a leadership game that teaches adaptability and cross-culture cooperation, one of many ‘‘serious” games produced by Will Interactive Inc. of Potomac. The company produces such games for military, law enforcement, health care and corporate clients.

Read the full article here.

WILL Interactive CEO Sharon Sloane talks about the “serious games” WILL uses to train business leaders and military personnel.

You can listen to the episode here.

by Tom Urtz
as published in eHealthcare Strategy & Trends

Every marketer’s playbook includes a chapter on customer service.

Remind the public of your philosophy. Recount warm deeds. Highlight delighted patients. And if the satisfaction rating agencies have good things to say, consider going public with the data.

On the tactical front, these moves are all appropriate. But step back and ask the bigger question. Does your organization have a strategy to improve customer service beyond the oft-repeated nostrums of treating patients like family and playing nice with co-workers?

Washington (DC) Hospital Center has one. Count on others to follow its lead.

Mark Smith, MD, chairman of emergency medicine at the 926-bed hospital, sat through a screening of Hate Comes Home,an intense, interactive DVD aimed at overcoming prejudice among high school students. Actors create the environment, then viewers are presented with a series of on-screen choices. How they respond at critical points dictates how the story unfolds.

“I could tell it worked because I had tears in my eyes,” says Smith.

Moved by the power of the tool, he met with James F. Caldas, president of Washington Hospital Center, urging him to subscribe to the same immersion approach to customer service.

Caldas agreed, and the hospital engaged Potomac, MD-based WILL Interactive, Inc., the creator of Hate Comes Home,to develop a hospital-specific video program to expose employees to the consequences – good and otherwise – of their choices. The result is The Anatomy of Care,a dramatic portrayal of life in a hospital, where viewers make choices and witness the responses.
Read more…

Serious Games Source and Gamasutra have both reposted CEO Sharon Sloane’s recent opinion piece about the current debate over the Columbine RPG.

Recent controversy surrounding this year’s Slamdance Guerrilla Gamemaker Competition and the Super Columbine Massacre Role Playing Game incited a debate and raised important questions. The commotion has subsided, but we will see this debate return because games, and more accurately, “serious games” are exploring a much greater range of topics. As a result, a serious game will soon hit a collective nerve again, causing us to ask, does this cross a line, and just what is a serious game anyway?

Read Sharon’s opinion piece here at Serious Games Source and Gamasutra.

Serious Games Source has also written a brief article about our recent grant award from CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield:

Hate Comes Home begins with a homecoming dance that is cut short when two students are killed in a hate crime committed by other students. In the game, the player must navigate through a series of decisions to reach a peaceful outcome. INO2, on the other hand, is designed to help 11 - 17-year-olds make educated choices about alcohol and other drugs by placing them in a series of potentially compromising situations.

Read the full article here.

Serious Game Source announces the winners of the Serious Games Showcase & Challenge, which includes WILL Interactive’s own Gator Six.

“Taking the award for “Best Serious Game” was WILL Interactive’s Gator Six, Battery Command Virtual Experience, a Virtual Experience Immersive Learning Simulation (VEILS) where the player is placed in the role of an Army Field Artillery Captain as the lead character in an interactive movie.”

Read the full article

Sharon’s interview on WFED Radio.

The Lexington Herald-Leader writes an article about WILL’s Generation Rx:

“Prescription drug abuse, a major problem in Eastern Kentucky, has now become a national public health issue, Mathews said.

‘Through this new interactive program, we now hope to lead the nation in demonstrating a new way to involve teenagers in avoiding future drug abuse,’ he said. ‘We’re dealing with a video-game generation.’”

Read the article

Yahoo! Tech writes an article about video games that teach kids life-changing lessons including WILL’s Generation Rx in its list of serious games:

“It’s not just about shoot ‘em ups, though. It’s called decision training, and Will Interactive takes the gameplay a step further by using real actors and movie scenarios in its games such as Generation RX. Generation RX deals with the growing problem of teenagers who abuse prescription drugs. Kids watch a story unfold and reach critical decision points. Based on those decisions, the story moves along, with kids exploring the various consequences.”

Read the article

Serious Game Source writes an article on the seriousness and effectiveness of WILL’s Generation Rx:

“Generation Rx was designed to improve critical thinking, judgment and decision-making, and uses WILL Interactive’s patented VEILS (Virtual Experience Immersive Learning Simulations) technology, which the company notes has been proven effective in changing behavior and enhancing positive decision-making.”

Read the full article