On November 28 and 29, Bilbao held the International Conference on Serious Games and Gamification. Once more, serious games “play” an important role at the Fun & Serious Game Festival, turning the Euskalduna Palace into a place of reference and networking in relation to the serious games industry and its many applications in the fields of marketing, training, education, health and simulation.
During the first day, November 28, international guiding lights, such as Samir AbouSamra, CTO of DigiPen USA, Rod Nelson, Operations Chief Engineer of Lotus F1, Sue Bohle of the Serious Game Association and Scott Schnaars of Badgeville provided a global overview of how to apply serious games and gamification. In the afternoon, the session focused on applications in the field of marketing, with Ramiro Suerio of Gestazión, Atala MartÃn of Theranking.com and Sergio Jiménez of Game Marketing, among others, to share projects and experiences.
On Thursday, November 29, the theme focused on the use of Serious Games in the fields of training and education. Ruth Martinez of 3Dlearning, Mikkel Lucas of Serious Games Interactive, Ibrahim Jabary of Gamelearn and Aida Gochgarian of KTM were some of the speakers in the session. Ángel Garijo of Arpexa, Inés Gallego of the Galdakano Hospital, and Pilar Matías of Anesvad participated in the health segment and Julio Álvarez of Virtualware presented VirtualRehab: Between Play and Rehabilitation.
As a final highlight, the Gala Awards for video games winners in the category of entertainment as well as serious games were held. The Champs Elysees Theatre was dressed to the nines to deliver the awards, with a red carpet along which would pass different personalities from culture, sport, and Spanish and international society who were visiting Bilbao that day to be present at this event.
The Fun & Serious Game Festival is sponsored by the Basque Government, Bilbao City Council and the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, in collaboration with El Corte Ingles, HP, Intel and ADESE (The Spanish Association of Entertainment Software Distributors and Editors) and with strategic advice from the prestigious American College, Digipen, based in Bilbao, Virtualware and the ESL (Electronic Sports League).