Serious Gaming
Lecture 1 – Introduction + Serious Games Applications
What are (serious) games?
A game is a system in which players engage in an abstract challenge, defined by rules,
interactivity, and feedback, that results in a quantifiable outcome often eliciting an
emotional reaction.
Generally, games must have:
o goals (in-game)
o rules
o feedback to players
o free choice to engage in play
Serious games do not have entertainment, enjoyment, or fun as their primary
purpose”.... and at least one additional goal.
“this is not to say that serious games are not entertaining, enjoyable, or fun, .....
Domains and applications
o Education
o Healthcare (e.g., training doctors)
o Health & wellbeing
o Emergency management
o Behaviour change
o And others…
Lecture 2 – Basics of Serious Games, User-Centred Design
Definitions and concepts
Play vs game
o Playing is a purposeless, intrinsically motivated human activity without explicit
rules
o Gaming is a purposeless, intrinsically-motivated human activity based on
explicit rules.
A ball: add rules and a goal make it a game
A game is a system in which players engage in an abstract challenge, defined by rules,
interactivity, and feedback, that results in a quantifiable outcome often eliciting an
emotional reaction.”
Generally, games must have:
o goals (in-game)
o rules
o feedback to players
o free choice to engage in play
Games that use some kind of computing machinery (e.g., a personal computer, a
smartphone or a piece of electronics dedicated for playing games such as a video game
console) are called digital games
A serious game is a digital game created with the intention to entertain and to achieve
at least one additional goal (e.g., learning or health).
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, o “Games that do not have entertainment, enjoyment, or fun as their primary
purpose”
Related but different concepts
o Gamification means to add game elements to a non-game area.
Duolingo: app with gamification. App itself is not necessarily a game
o Games with a purpose denote games designed to exploit crowdsourcing in
order to achieve a non-game purpose. e.g. people developed it so humans solve
puzzles that contribute to research; game is used for a specific purpose (citizen
science)
o An entertainment game is a digital game that has exclusively the goal to
entertain the player
Why serious games
o Making content more enjoyable
o Increase user motivation
o Reach users on an emotional level
o Effective goal achievement (e.g., learning) Simulation beyond the real world
scope
o Adaptive difficulty and immediate feedback
Goals in serious games
Learning goal
o What players should learn through playing the game.
o The goal is not always really “learning”, e.g., games aiming behavior change à we
can still use learning goal as a broad term.
o Other common (mostly synonymous terms): learning objective, learning
outcome, “serious” goal, “serious” content, educational goal, or characterizing
goal.
o In most cases, this is why we develop a serious game
What Players Learn Incidentally is Not Always Learning Goal
o Playing games can have benefits for players (e.g., social, emotional, cognitive
benefits, relaxation, recovery)
o We can learn things “incidentally” (e.g., learning history when playing
Civilization).
o This does not make them “serious games” A serious game is developed with the
learning goal as a core design objective
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, Characterizing Goals for Competences
o
o The characterizing goals of serious games can be matched to competence
domains, e.g., cognition and perception, emotion and volition, sensory-motor
control, personal characteristics, social attitudes, and media use.
o not very specific
Defining Learning Goals
o What can people do after playing your game?
o Who? (target audience?)
o What? Consider different levels of knowledge (e.g., Bloom’s taxonomy)
o SMART—Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound
o
o
o Bloom's Taxonomy: classification system of cognitive skills used to define and
organize learning objectives. It categorizes skills into six levels, ranging from
simple to complex
Player Experience Goals
o The intended experience that players have when playing the game.
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, o Player experience “denotes the individual and personal experience of playing
games” that is related to different factors (e.g., enjoyment, immersion,
satisfaction of needs).
Player experience
Motivation
Flow
Dual flow
o The concept of dual flow is characteristic of, and unique to, serious games.
o The appropriate balance of task difficulty and skill level ensures that the double
mission of serious games is accomplished: being both effective and attractive.
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