Serious game

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Introduction

Serious games induce some kind of affective or motor learning (understood in very broad sense) at any level. Put more simply: serious games are used for more than entertainment. (Susi et al. 2007, Breuer & Bente, 2010).

Serious games have a long history. A good example are military games. Today (since the late nineties), "serious game" most often related to a kind of educational computer game or a kind of educational computer simulation.

Abt (1975:9) is considered to be the first author to define serious game: "We are concerned with serious games in the sense that these games have an explicit and carefully thought-out educational purpose and are not intended to be played primarily for amusement." According to Susi et al. (2007) serious games are games that “engage the user and contribute to the achievement of predefined objectives”. In other words, serious games are also being used for other purposes than education. According to Breuer & Bente (2010), “the term 'serious game' as it applies to digital games was coined by Ben Sawyer in his 2003 paper on the potential of using digital games for policy making (Sawyer 2003).”

We suggest the following technical definition for serious computer games: A serious computer game is any kind of interactive application - for example a computer simulation or a microworld - that is designed and implemented according to gameplay principles. Often, a serious computer game make use of game technology that has been developped for recrational purposes, but it must not. Finally, a non-serious game could be used for serious purposes, e.g. a board game may be used for teambuilding or to learn strategic thinking.

The main purpose of serious games is education and training. Within education, there are many different subtypes, e.g. drill and practice games on one end and so-called "epistemic games" that help players learn to think like professionals on the other.

Other areas of serious gaming use include advertizing, political and religious propaganda, health (helping people in various ways with health issues), military, etc.

Breuer and Bente (2010) created a Venn diagram that we reproduced in slightly modified form and that identifes how serious games fit into the general "entertain education" area and how it relates to technology-enhanced learning (called e-learning in the original):

Serious games in the Landscape. Modified figure from Breuer and Bente (2010)

Entertainment education simply refers to the ida to make learning more enjoyable, e.g. by adding game design elements, though gamification or other similar means. Game-based learning refers to all sorts of games made for educational purposes. Digital game-based learning (DGBL) includes games that include learning as the main or sole purpose, both typical learning games of the 80's as well as large subset of modern serious games. The diagram shows that serious games may include other purposes than education. Edutainment can be seen as a subset of DGBL (as in the original figure), however we also left the possibility that edutainment can just refer to a kind of non-serious game (e.g. a title that may not harm your children)

See also:

Learning effects and assessment

Hopes

“Can games be used to support meaningful learning? Most likely the answer is yes, conditional on more research being conducted in this area. In general, we believe that (a) learning is at its best when it is active, goal-oriented, contextual-ized, and interesting (e.g., Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Bruner, 1961; Quinn, 2005; Vygotsky, 1978); and (b) learning environments should thus be interactive, provide ongoing feedback, grab and sustain attention, and have appropriate and adaptive levels of challenge— i.e., the features of good games (e.g., Prensky, 2001; Salen & Zimmerman, 2004).” (Shute et al. 2010: 137)

The Summit on Educational Games, page 18 identifies the following features of optimal learning environments and note that gameplayers implemented many of these features in gameplay:

  • Clear learning goals
  • Broad experiences and practice opportunities that continue to challenge the learner and reinforce expertise
  • Continuous monitoring of progress, and use of this information to diagnose performance and adjust instruction to learner level of mastery
  • Encouragement of inquiry and questions, and response with answers that are appropriate to the learner and context
  • Contextual Bridging: Games and simulations can close the gap between what is learned and its use.

A major puzzle in terms of motivation concerns hard fun (Papert, 1998). Many games are difficult and achieving a certain level relies a longer and maybe diffcult process. Therefore one may ask the question, why some some people enjoy the challenge of a game but dislike challenges in a school setting. Although this does not apply to the whole population - the promotors of serious gaming seem to forget that most people don't play and proable don't like to play video games and that many leaners actually do enjoy leaning - one can ask what differs a learning situation in game from the one in a typical school setting.

Firstly, Breuer and Bente (2010) point out that in game there are three levels of human-computer interaction: “

  1. On a micro-level of individual inputs and outputs (e.g. you push a button and your character moves)
  2. On a narrative level (i.e. you interact with game elements such as non-player characters to progress through the game and unfold its story)
  3. On a meta-level of setting and manipulating the game's rules (this includes choosing a difficulty levels as well as cheating or creating your own game content via editors)”

This means, that a learner can experience a feeling of self-efficacy, i.e. more easily experience their own actions to be effective in the virtual game world. More generally, games seem to induce states of flow, i.e. situations where learners have clear goals and receive immediate feedback, the challenge is adapted to the skill level, feel to be in control, are focused on the task, etc.

The Summit on Educational Games report also identifies the kinds of knowledge and skills that might be taught effectively with games and simulation. The list includes knowledge and skills that are hard to teach and train in other ways.

  • Higher order skills such as strategic thinking, resource management mastery, interaction with systems, multi-tasking and decision making within complex situations and changing scenarios, learning to compromise and to make trade-offs, manage complex relationships, exercise leadership, collaboration and team building
  • Practial Skills Training in a safe environment, such as operating complex machinery, laboratory work, marketing techniques
  • High Performance Situations
  • Rarely used skills
  • Developing expertise
  • Team building

Research

.... to do ....


How about learning from playing "not serious" games.

Breuer (2011:241) identified several types of studies that investigated the influence of playing digital games on perception and lower level cognitive processing. “Previous research has, e.g., shown that digital games can improve visual selective attention (Green and Bavelier, 2000), mental rotation skills (Greenfeld et al., 1994), spatial perception (Subrahmanyam, 1994) or eye-hand coordination (Griffith et al., 1983).” He also notes that few research exists with respect to higher-order cognition and concludes: “Given the complexity of tasks present in many current computer and video games the question arises whether digital games can also affect higher order information processing such as the formation and alteration of cognitive schemata.”


Measuring learning

Shute et al. (2010), in order to respect learning though games, suggest to “focus on propose using ECD (Evidence-centered design), stealth assessment, and automated data collection and analysis tools to not only collect valid evidence of students’ competency states in game environments, but to also reduce teachers’ workload in relation to managing the students’ work (or “play”) products.” (Shute et al. 2010: 158).

History

Serious computer games go back to the 1970's (Abt, 1970), and mainly appeared under names like "educational game", "business game", "gaming and simuluation", "simulation", "edutainment", political games. However, there may be some subtle differences with respect to modern main-stream serious games, for example:

  • The "fun" aspect usually was less developed in simulation games
  • Older serious games did less often use so-called gaming engines
  • Educational games did often just implement a rewards system and were probably not as engaging as real video games
  • Edutainment refers to games that (maybe) would develop cognitive skills with younger children, mainly commercial CDs
  • Serious games most often play in real world settings and the target audience is rather adults as opposed to smaller children in edutainment or older educational games.

Recently, so-called gamification gained attention in some circles. "Gamification" mainly uses simple reward systems that are supposed to engage users in activities. It's inspired by "boy scout" badges and actually implements badging systems.

Genres

Serious games are not necessarily labeled as such. Many synomyes are used, e.g. immersive Learning Simulations (ILS) or game-based learning software. In addition, some types of simulations, construction environments like microworlds, etc. that do have some kind of "fun" aspect now are also being sold as serious games...

A natural list

Below is a provisional list of genres. Some can overlap, i.e. a game can be a kind of several genres.

  • Advertizing games: “is the practice of using video games to advertise a product, organization or viewpoint.” (Advergaming, Wikipedia)
  • Construction games: include several subgenres
    • Building games (e.g. roads, bridges, buildings, ...) where players acquire some underlying principles and/or skills.
    • Simulation games like SimCity where players could develop more abstract knowledge like planning or understanding a system.
  • Edutainment: include games that may teach something to children or at least not harm them ... Usually commercial CD ROMS.
  • Health games: include a broad range of games
    • Exergames: help people exercising and often includes technology that tracks body movements, body reactions, or use of mechanical devices. In addtion, such games often use input devices like a wii fit board or the Kinect.
    • Assessment games
    • Therapeutic games
    • Prevention games
  • News games: apply journalistic principles to the creation of a game (Newsgame, Wikipedia). Its purpose is often to sensitize people about a recent situation.
  • Games for change, games for good etc.
  • Simulation

It is difficult to draw a clear border between serious games and simulations and between serious games and edutainment. The difference between a serious games and a simulation is that serious games rely on key elements of computer gaming, i.e must be based on good gameplay and playability. The difference between serious games and other gaming genres like edutainment may be that the former has some built-in serious purpose, whereas the latter becomes serious when the user decides to assign such a purpose to it.

Taxonomies

Caspian learning, retrieved 16:33, 10 October 2012 (CEST) identifies:

  • Egocentric Sims
  • Branching Story Sims
  • Real Time Strategy Sims
  • Exocentric Sims
  • Episodic Sims
  • Resource Management
  • Virtual Worlds
  • Device-based Sims

Ben Sawyer and Peter Smith, in their 2008 Serious Games Taxonomy (broken link), used two dimensions:

  1. Content: Games for Health, Advergames, Games for Training, Games for Education, Games for Science and Research, Production, Games as Work
  2. Sector: Government & NGO, Defense, Healthcare, Marketing & Communications, Education, Corporate, Industry

Crosstabulated, this lead to the following table:

Sawyer & Smith Serious games taxonomy 2008: Source: Understanding "Serious" Games

Examples

Political sensibilization, education and propaganda

Many of these games are playable through a web browser. Some of these may require a plugin, e.g. Flash or a more exotic format like Unity

  • Amnesty the Game “Using your wits, drive and passion you have the opportunity to save six prisoners condemned to death, help spread the message of justice and human rights, and support Amnesty International’s fight against Capital Punishment!”

Links

Overviews

  • Serious Games Taxonomy by Ben Sawyer: Digitalmill, Inc. & Serious Games Initiative and Peter Smith: University of Central Florida, RETRO Lab.
Slides


Reports

  • Summit on Educational Games, Harnessing the power of video games for learning. Web site includes a Fact Sheet, PPT, and Full report, Federation of American Scientists, 2005. Still good reading.


Indexes of serious games

  • Serious game (Wikipedia), includes a longer list at the end of the article

People and organizations

  • SeriousGames.org: “The Serious Games Initiative is focused on uses for games in exploring management and leadership challenges facing the public sector. Part of its overall charter is to help forge productive links between the electronic game industry and projects involving the use of games in education, training, health, and public policy. The Serious Games Initiative was founded at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C.”, retrieved 11:40, 5 October 2012 (CEST). At this date, the website was empty (only a home page)...
  • Games for Health “Founded in 2004, the Games for Health Project supports community, knowledge and business development efforts to use cutting-edge games and game technologies to improve health and health care. The Pioneer Portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is the lead conference sponsor and a major supporter of the Games for Health Project.”, retrieved 11:40, 5 October 2012 (CEST)
  • HealthGamesResearch.org: “Health Games Research is a national program that provides scientific leadership and resources to advance the research, design, and effectiveness of digital games and game technologies that promote health. It is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Pioneer Portfolio and headquartered at the University of California, Santa Barbara.”, , retrieved 11:40, 5 October 2012 (CEST)

Journals

conferences and proceedings

  • SGDA 2012 (list of contributions, but (Access restricted)
    • Minhua Ma, Manuel Fradinho, Jannicke Baalsrud Hauge, Heiko Duin, Klaus-Dieter Thoben (Eds.): Serious Games Development and Applications - Third International Conference, SGDA 2012, Bremen, Germany, September 26-29, 2012. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 7528 Springer 2012, ISBN 978-3-642-33686-7
  • ICEC 2012. International conference on entertainment computing. (no proceedings so far).

Resource sites and pages


Informal literature


Bibliography

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Acknowledgement

The first drafts of the article are strongly based on the Serious game article.

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