The Alliance of New Generation Interactive Leisure and Simulations (ANGILS) started out as a UK-based organization for people who wanted to see how far games could go in being useful for other lines of work. These days, however, the organization has changed its focus somewhat and made itself into a trade body.

The newly reconstituted trade body known as ANGILS launched yesterday. Once simply a means to network, ANGILS is now devoted to looking at serious games and the development of new technologies for gaming and other forms of digital entertainment, inviting individuals and organizations to join in.

Why would this be important, you might ask? It's because the world of gaming is gaining more ground outside of the niche it's been put in. From the applications of gaming in educating people or in training particular skills, or from simply programming the best applications or the most useful workarounds for your PSP and DS, gaming is expanding its influence as a field where different interests converge. ANGILS has in its member roster groups that represent those usually unrelated interests, such as defense organizations and centers devoted to educational technology.

As founding CEO Martine Parry said of the enterprise,

This is a two-way street, with the game industry benefiting from access to a relevant pool of talent, new projects, new markets 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.