Digital Library Keyword Archives

serious games

- 49 articles or papers

 

Learning and Enjoyment in Serious Gaming – Contradiction or Complement?

Wechselberger Ulrich
2014 DiGRA '13 - Proceedings of the 2013 DiGRA International Conference: DeFragging Game Studies

Research has mainly neglected to examine if the possible antagonism of play/games and seriousness affects the educational potential of serious gaming. This article follows a microsociological approach and treats play and seriousness as different social frames, with each being indicated by significant symbols and containing unique social rules, adequate behavior and typical consequences of action. It is assumed that due to the specific qualities of these frames, serious frames are perceived as more credible but less entertaining than playful frames – regardless of subject matter. Two empirical studies were conducted to test these hypotheses. Results partially confirm expectations, but effects are not as strong as assumed and sometimes seem to be moderated by further variables, such as gender and attitudes. Overall, this article demonstrates that the educational potential of serious gaming depends not only on media design, but also on social context and personal variables.

 

End of story? Quest, narrative and enactment in computer games

Løvlie Anders Sundnes
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

Espen Aarseth recently claimed that all games referred to as ’narrative games’ could better be described as ’quest games’. The writer of this paper suggests that Max Payne is a possible counter-example to this hypothesis; i.e. a game with a strong focus on narrative which is not easily understood as a quest game. The writer suggests that this, and other similar games, could better be understood in terms of a theory of ’enactment’, which is seen as related to, but not similar to theatrical acting. Extending this idea, the concept of ’the estrangement effect’ in theatre theory is used to analyze a collection of small computer games from the perspective of theory about ”serious games”.

 

OceanQuest: A University-Based Serious Game Project

Parker J. R. Chan Sonny
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

A case study of a game design project is presented, in which both traditional game goals and educational goals exist. One way to create a design that respects both sets of goals is illustrated.

 

Pervasive Persuasive: A Rhetorical Design Approach to a Location-Based Spell-Casting Game for Tourists

Walz Steffen P. Ballagas Rafael "Tico"
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

REXplorer is a pervasive game service launching in June 2007. The game aims at persuading on site tourists to explore and enjoy the history of the UNESCO world heritage city core of Regensburg, Germany. In the game, historical and mythological spirits are stationed at touristic points of interest throughout the mostly Gothic and Romanesque city core of Regensburg. Players rent a special "paranormal activity detector" - a device composed of a mobile phone and a GPS receiver in a custom designed shell - at Regensburg's tourist information. Players interact with the location-based and site-specific spirits by performing a gesture, i.e. by waving the wandlike detector through the air in a specified fashion, thus "casting a spell". Situated gestures allow players to evoke and communicate with spirits to receive and resolve quests. With their detector, players can also take pictures, which appear on each player's individually generated souvenir, a weblog. The weblog also maps a player's route, describes spirits a player has encountered, and lists books and deepening URLs for each character and site. In this paper, we focus on the rhetorical approach behind REXplorer, and discuss exemplary formal and dramaturgical persuasive design tactics. These tactics, we believe, can not only help to make "serious" activities such as city exploration and history learning fun and sustainable, but also influence player behavior during pervasively computed and situated gameplay.

 

The Gigue Is Up: High Culture Gets Game

Jenson Jennifer Castell Suzanne de Taylor Nicholas Droumeva Milena Fisher Stephanie
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper documents the design, development, and extensive play-testing of a Flash-based Baroque music game, “Tafelkids: The Quest for Arundo Donax”, focusing on the tension between constructing an online resource that an audience aged 8-14 would find fun and engaging, and the directive to include historical information and facts, as well as convey some of the sounds, musical structures and conventions of Baroque music, history and culture through play. We further document 3 large play testing sessions, in which we observed, in total, over 150 students aged 12-14 play the game. We conclude with a discussion of the particular challenges in designing a bridge from propositions to play, in effect digitally re-mediating, Baroque music education and thereby address the broader epistemological question of what and how we may best learn, and learn best, from games and play.

 

Team Structure in the Development of Game-based Learning Environments

Kirjavainen Antti Nousiainen Tuula Kankaanranta Marja
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

This paper examines the factors related to the composition of a development team of digital Game-Based Learning Environments. The aim is to examine the structure of a development team and the expertise, roles and tasks of team members. This study is part of the research project Human-Centered Design of Game-Based Learning Environments. The overall aim of the project is to construct a multidisciplinary and user-driven process for the development of digital Game-Based Learning Environments. The study was conducted according to the principles of development research and action research. The action research cycles consisted of four game development projects. It was discovered that varied expertise in different disciplines was needed in different phases of development. Guidelines for team structure of Game-Based Learning Environments development were presented in the results. Further research is needed on the development process of Game-Based Learning Environments to enable better collaboration of a multi-disciplinary development team.

 

Serious Games in language learning and teaching – a theoretical perspective

Sørensen Holm Birgitte Meyer Bente
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

The paper focuses on a part of a new project Serious Games on a Global Market which focuses on language learning and teaching. Serious Games are digital games and equipment with an agenda of educational design. The paper makes a theoretical argument for a Serious Games product based on theories of educational design and learning in relation to games. Furthermore technology based perspectives on language teaching and learning are described and in addition to this, the paper draws on data from two recent research projects that have studied the role of game based activity in children's digitally based practices in off school contexts. This theoretical construction will be employed in the developing of the prototype of the digitally based educational platform "Mingoville".

 

Balancing Three Different Foci in the Design of Serious Games: Engagement, Training Objective and Context

Frank Anders
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

Serious games aim to be both fun and playable games but at the same time be useful for a non-entertainment purpose. This poses an interesting challenge to the design process; how can we ensure that the design allows both for fun and engagement while at the same time fulfilling the nonentertainment purpose? The game design for educational games (a branch of serious games) is dependent on the topic (training objective) and under what circumstances the game will be used. We propose a pragmatic design approach where three design goals are maintained simultaneously: (1) to create an engaging game, (2) to properly cater for the training objective, and (3) to allow the training context surrounding the game to influence design decisions. We will go through a range of design issues and show how the three design goals are interdependent and how a balanced design can fulfill all three. For instance, the training objective may impede a straightforward design of rules and goals. The training context will have an affect how the challenges are constructed and the way learning through games can be carried out. To illustrate this approach the design process of Foreign Ground, a serious game for training, is presented and discussed.

 

Extending the ‘Serious Game’ Boundary: Virtual Instructors in Mobile Mixed Reality Learning Games

Doswell Jayfus Harmeyer Kathleen
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

Virtual Instructor enabled mobile augmented reality learning (MARL) games have the potential to provide a fun and educational experience. In these types of "serious games", learners/game players may wear a mobile headsup display that provide a rich graphical interface over the real world allowing the real world to be augmented with digital annotations including animation, graphics, text, and video. Graphical annotations may highlight specific realworld objects that hint the player to manipulate an object in order to achieve a certain objective in the game. Additionally, a mobile headset may display resource stats including, but not limited to, team hit points and geographical location of individual team members participating in the game experience. Furthermore, a virtual instructor may assist in providing instruction on how to play the video game and assist students in solving challenges that require academic skills. Hence, in a MARL game, a virtual instructor may provide continuous and autonomous instructin or guidance to the game player/learners anytime, anyplace, and at any-pace. The virtual instructor may serve as a mission leader or guide for the player's real-world quest.

 

Experiential Modes of Game Play

Appelman Robert
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

In order to gather empirical & qualitative data on game play across all genres, and at the same time addressing multiple research questions, a framework was established at the VX Lab at Indiana University to standardize methodology. This Experiential Mode Framework allows for the inclusion of player perceptions, experiences, and allows for coupling with game structures and functionality. Following a postpositivist methodology devised by Robert Yin, this paper describes the logic, strategies, and incorporation of the Experiential Mode Framework in Game Play Analysis.