Founding Chairman Professor Bob Stone of Birmingham University is joined by an Advisory Council that includes Joe Little of BP, John Newton of NCR, Mark Oulert of Booz Allen Hamilton, and Paul Hollins of UK learning research organization CETIS. There has also been confirmation from Nader Nanjiani of Cisco USA as well as from key representatives from the games and defence communities, to be announced soon.


The UK-based non-profit organisation was originally launched in 2003 as a network for individuals interested in the application of games and other innovative 'knowledge economy and games' technologies and skills in non-games-industry applications. ANGILS has now transitioned to a trade association and offers membership to organisations in addition to individuals.


Martine Parry, ANGILS' founding CEO said: "The existence of ANGILS illustrates that the serious games market is maturing. It's becoming clearer where the benefits and opportunities are across technology and skills transfer between the games and knowledge sectors. This is a two-way street, with the game industry benefiting from access to a relevant pool of talent, new projects, new marketsR and emerging technologies that can help address the issues with next-gen games development.


The knowledge industries meanwhile have greater and more cost-effective access to the tools, programming, and design know-how that they need to fulfill their requirements for immersive and /or engaging environments, whether simple Flash-based learning games or rich virtual worlds."

Professor Bob Stone, Founding Chairman said: "The serious games movement has opened up a hitherto-untapped pool of expertise to the global interactive 3D community as a whole, enabling us to exploit multidisciplinary skills in arts, science and technology, heritage, and human factors, all - to mention but a handful - very early on in the evolution of this exciting field. If we also take onboard the lessons learned from the highs and lows of the Virtual Reality "era" of the 1990s, then serious gaming is set to revolutionise the way we work, learn, and communicate."

Meanwhile, John Newton of NCR endorsed serious games in corporate learning by stating, "Serious Games represent the next evolutionary step in the field of technology-enabled learning, bringing new levels of engagement, motivation, and context to the learning process. However, Serious Games isn't just about advancing learning through technology; it's also about unlocking business advantage through creating effective training programmes that can be deployed faster and enable staff to perform better."

ANGILS will be announcing its Founding Company Members soon, along with news of the showcase that is being held at Digital Hollywood Europe on November 29th in London.