Lab Directors Dr. Jan Cannon-Bowers and Dr. Clint Bowers are the editors of a recently published textbook by IGI Global titled Serious Game Design and Development Technologies For Training Learning. This textbook is a large collection of works, both empirical and observatory, from serious games professionals and academics hailing from around the world making one of RETRO's goals a reality. RETRO strives to continually contribute to the canon of the science and literature for the learning and training capabilities of serious gaming and gaming in general. Also featured as authors in the book from RETRO are Dr. Anya Andrews and Rachel Joyce. The book is available to order on Amazon.com, so get your copy today!

While researchers are putting the final touches on studies conducted at the Ralph H Johnson VA Medical Center in South Carolina using the Guardian Angel game, our alcohol relapse prevention game has made it to the small screen! This May the story, Video Games Used to Fight Alcohol Addiction aired on WCIV ABC 4 Local News in Charleston, SC., and our lab couldn't be more proud! To see the video clip and read the post including quotes from test subjects battling alcoholism, click here!

The RETRO Research team has been hard at work writing about our serious game efforts in both the development and research fields, and we are seeing the fruits of our labors come in publications. James Bohnsack, a Graduate Research Assistant, will be making two presentations this year on his co-authored papers. This March James will be at The 2010 Southeastern Psychological Association's (SEPA) Convention presenting, "Brain Lateralization as a Predictor of Team Performance." Following that presentation this summer he will be presenting our training effectiveness JROTC study using our in-house developed Flash game Insignia Searcher in, "The Effectiveness of the Insignia Searcher Video Game as a Learning Tool," poster at The American Psychological Association 2010 Convention. Additionally, the August 2009 SALT Conference Presentation about designing the Guardian Angel Relapse-Prevention game, "Lessons Learned: Adult Learners and Serious Game Design," has been picked up for publication by The Journal of Instruction Delivery Systems. Stay tuned for more good news as our lab has geared up for more serious games studies and more serious games development for 2010!

DAU

RETRO is very excited to have concluded the Rapid-Prototype Minigame Developement Project with the Defense Aquisition University (DAU) quickly churning out two Flash games to be used by DAU students as course primers preparing them for the course ahead. For the Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) Course, may we present The Invasion Prevention Company where factory workers are tirelessly making anti-alien weaponry while the user identifies which CPI tools might clog up production and possiby doom us to an alien invasion! Next, Select A Cell developed for the Logistics 101 course takes the user on a life-to-death cycle of equipping a military force with much needed cell phones while they are deployed. Both games were great successes and we hope to work on follow-up games in the future.