Robot Factory, a
finalist at this year’s SGS&C held early December in Orlando, FL, is an
innovative "Serious Game" developed by Simcoach
Games with the aspiration of introducing a next generation brain training
game that enhances the player's general fluid intelligence.
While most of the games in todays’ marketplace
demand access to crystallized intelligence, Robot Factory targets three
skills that research co-relates to fluid intelligence: ability to update (store,
manipulate, retrieve, and replace critical information); the skill of switching
(flexibly changing the focus of our efforts based on changes in the environment);
and inhibiting well learned responses when circumstances dictate.
Leveraging on the background assumption that reasoning
and problem solving in conjunction with varied, complex, and dynamic data are
becoming a routine aspect of many jobs, Robot Factory creates an amazing
context for storing and manipulating complex sequences of information in a
fast-paced environment.
Played in the context of being a worker drone
in a futuristic and dystopian robot factory and targeting high-performing
adults, the game offers compounding exercises in increasingly complex
configurations though adaptive algorithms across over 100 different shift
tasks (in the game, two-minute levels are called shifts).
Robot Factory was built in collaboration with neuroscientists to engage fundamental cognitive processes that play a crucial role in fluid intelligence.
Robot Factory was built in collaboration with neuroscientists to engage fundamental cognitive processes that play a crucial role in fluid intelligence.
Game Background
According
to Simcoach Games website, reasoning
on the basis of diverse, dynamic, and massive data is becoming a routine aspect
of many jobs, particularly for the intelligence analyst who must gather and
analyze ambiguous data, and communicate time-sensitive inferences and
recommendations derived from these under stressful conditions.
The
Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), the research arm of
the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is funding a rigorous,
high-quality research through a program called Strengthening
Human Adaptive Reasoning and Problem-Solving (SHARP). The goal of SHARP is
to advance the science on optimizing human adaptive reasoning and
problem-solving, by testing and validating interventions that have the
potential to significantly improve these abilities - with the goal of enhancing
the cognitive performance of high-performing adults in information-rich
environments.
One
research team, headed by Honeywell, asked Simcoach Games to design, develop and
deliver a "Serious Game" that would form a central component of their research
intervention. The game, which places the player in the context of being a
worker in a robot factory, was built from the ground up to engage fundamental
cognitive processes that play a crucial role in fluid intelligence. Simcoach
Games worked closely with leading experts from major commercial and academic
research institutions to design a game aligned with current scientific theory that
would also provide endless variety and entertainment over the span of several
weeks of training.