[Janis Cannon bowers] Serious Game Design and Deve(BookFi org) pdf
Serious Game Design and Development: Technologies for Training and Learning Jan Cannon-Bowers University of Central Florida, USA Clint Bowers University of Central Florida, USA
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Serious game design and development : technologies for training and learning / Janis Cannon-Bowers and Clint Bowers, edi-
tors. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.Summary: "With an increasing use of vido games in various disciplines within the scientific community, this book seeks to understand the nature of effective games and to provide guidance for how best to harness the power of gaming technology to
successfully accomplish a more serious goal"--Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-61520-739-8 (hardcover) -- ISBN 978-1-61520-740-4 (ebook) 1. Video games--Design. 2. Video games industry-
- Technological innovations. 3. Game theory. I. Cannon-Bowers, Janis A. II. Bowers, Clint A. GV1469.3.S48 2010 794.8--dc22 2009050068 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.
All work contributed to this book is new, previously-unpublished material. The views expressed in this book are those of the
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Editorial Advisory Board
Gil Muniz, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, USA Perry McDowell, Navy Postgraduate School, Canada Denise Nicholson, ACTIVE Laboratory, UCF, USA Ray Perez,
Office of Naval Research, USA
Doug Watley, BreakAway Ltd., USA
List of Reviewers
Lucas Blair,
RETRO Laboratory, UCF, USA
Sae Schatz, ACTIVE laboratory, UCF, USA Janan Smither, Dept. of Psychology, UCF, USA Peter Smith, ADL Co-Lab, USA Rachel Joyce,
RETRO Laboratory, UCF, USA
Denise Nicholson, ACTIVE Laboratory, UCF, USA Steve Fiore, Department of Philosophy, UCF, USA Rudy McDaniel, Department of Digital Media, UCF, USA Florian Jentsch, Dept. of Psychology, UCF, USA Bob Kenny, Dept. of Digital Media, UCF, USA
Table of Contents
Foreword ............................................................................................................................................. xiv
Preface ................................................................................................................................................ xvii
Section 1
Design Principles for Serious Games
Chapter 1 Mini-Games with Major Impacts ............................................................................................................ 1 Peter A. Smith, Joint ADL Co-Lab, USA Alicia Sanchez, Defense Acquisition University, USA Chapter 2 Serious Storytelling: Narrative Considerations for Serious Games Researchers
and Developers ...................................................................................................................................... 13
Rudy McDaniel, University of Central Florida, USA Stephen M. Fiore, University of Central Florida, USA Denise Nicholson, University of Central Florida, USA
Chapter 3 An Adventure in Usability: Discovering Usability Where it was not Expected ................................... 31 Holly Blasko-Drabik, University of Central Florida, USA Tim Smoker, University of Central Florida, USA Carrie E. Murphy, University of Central Florida, USA
Chapter 4 Development of Game-Based Training Systems: Lessons Learned in an Inter-Disciplinary Field in the Making ............................................................................................................................... 47 Talib Hussain, BBN Technologies, USA Wallace Feurzeig, BBN Technologies, USA Jan Cannon-Bowers, University of Central Florida, USA Susan Coleman, Intelligent Decision Systems, Inc., USA Alan Koenig, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST), USA John Lee, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST), USA Ellen Menaker, Intelligent Decision Systems, Inc., USA Kerry Moffitt, BBN Technologies, USA Curtiss Murphy, Alion Science and Technology, AMSTO Operation, USA Kelly Pounds, i.d.e.a.s. Learning, USA Bruce Roberts, BBN Technologies, USA Jason Seip, Firewater Games LLC, USA Vance Souders, Firewater Games LLC, USA Richard Wainess, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST), USA Chapter 5 DAU CardSim: Paper Prototyping an Acquisitions Card Game .......................................................... 81 David Metcalf, University of Central Florida, USA Sara Raasch, 42 Entertainment, USA Clarissa Graffeo, University of Central Florida, USA Chapter 6 Kinesthetic Communication for Learning in Immersive Worlds ........................................................ 102 Christopher Ault, The College of New Jersey, USA Ann Warner-Ault, The College of New Jersey, USA Ursula Wolz, The College of New Jersey, USA Teresa Marrin Nakra, The College of New Jersey, USA
Section 2
Applications of Serious Games
Chapter 7 How Games and Simulations can Help Meet America’s Challenges in Science Mathematics and Technology Education ............................................................................................ 117 Henry Kelly, Federation of American Scientists, USAChapter 8 Games for Peace: Empirical Investigations with PeaceMaker ........................................................... 134 Cleotilde Gonzalez, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Lisa Czlonka, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Chapter 9 Play’s the Thing: A Wager on Healthy Aging ..................................................................................... 150 Mihai Nadin, University of Texas at Dallas, USA Chapter 10 Re-Purposing a Recreational Video Game as a Serious Game for Second Language Acquisition ......................................................................................................................... 178 Yolanda A. Rankin, IBM Almaden Research Center, USA Marcus W. Shute, Clark Atlanta University, USA
Section 3
Games in Healthcare
Chapter 11 Application of Behavioral Theory in Computer Game Design for Health Behavior Change ............ 196 Ross Shegog, UT-School of Public Health, USA Chapter 12 Avatars and Diagnosis: Delivering Medical Curricula in Virtual Space ............................................ 233 Claudia L. McDonald, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, USA Chapter 13 Using Serious Games for Mental Health Education ........................................................................... 246 Anya Andrews, Novonics Corporation, Training Technology Lab (TTL), USA Rachel Joyce, University of Central Florida, USA Clint Bowers, University of Central Florida, USA Chapter 14 Pervasive Health Games ..................................................................................................................... 260 Martin Knöll, University of Stuttgart, Germany Chapter 15 Influencing Physical Activity and Healthy Behaviors in College Students: Lessonsfrom an Alternate Reality Game ......................................................................................................... 270
Jeanne D. Johnston, Indiana University, USA Lee Sheldon, Indiana University, USA Anne P. Massey, Indiana University, USA
Section 4
The Way Ahead: The Future of Serious Games
Chapter 16 Establishing a Science of Game Based Learning ............................................................................... 290 Alicia Sanchez, Defense Acquisition University, USA Jan Cannon-Bowers, University of Central Florida, USA Clint Bowers, University of Central Florida, USA Chapter 17 The Way Ahead in Serious Games ...................................................................................................... 305 Jan Cannon-Bowers, University of Central Florida, USA
Compilation of References ............................................................................................................... 311
About the Contributors .................................................................................................................... 341
Index ................................................................................................................................................... 352
Detailed Table of Contents
Foreword ............................................................................................................................................. xiv
Preface ................................................................................................................................................ xvii
Section 1
Design Principles for Serious Games
This section provides several different perspectives on designing and developing serious games. Each
chapter offers a design principle or strategy that can be employed to enhance the effectiveness of serious
games. Several also include lessons learned drawn from specific serious game development efforts.Chapter 1 Mini-Games with Major Impacts ............................................................................................................ 1 Peter A. Smith, Joint ADL Co-Lab, USA Alicia Sanchez, Defense Acquisition University, USA The authors describe a strategy for developing mini games that can be embedded in game-based train-
ing. They also present descriptions of several case studies that used mini-games as part of the learning strategy.
and Developers ...................................................................................................................................... 13
Rudy McDaniel, University of Central Florida, USA Stephen M. Fiore, University of Central Florida, USA Denise Nicholson, University of Central Florida, USA
This chapter discusses the importance of narrative in serious games. These authors contend that narrative aids can help in game design in several ways, including: increasing the player’s motivation to remain in the game; stories can embed learning objectives; narrative can tie together elements in the game into a coherent whole.
Chapter 3 An Adventure in Usability: Discovering Usability Where it was not Expected ................................... 31 Holly Blasko-Drabik, University of Central Florida, USA Tim Smoker, University of Central Florida, USA Carrie E. Murphy, University of Central Florida, USA This chapter describes the goals of usability and how it is traditionally performed using two popular methods. It goes on to discuss appropriate usability measures for serious games. Chapter 4 Development of Game-Based Training Systems: Lessons Learned in an Inter-Disciplinary Field in the Making ............................................................................................................................... 47 Talib Hussain, BBN Technologies, USA Wallace Feurzeig, BBN Technologies, USA Jan Cannon-Bowers, University of Central Florida, USA Susan Coleman, Intelligent Decision Systems, Inc., USA Alan Koenig, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST), USA John Lee, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST), USA Ellen Menaker, Intelligent Decision Systems, Inc., USA Kerry Moffitt, BBN Technologies, USA Curtiss Murphy, Alion Science and Technology, AMSTO Operation, USA Kelly Pounds, i.d.e.a.s. Learning, USA Bruce Roberts, BBN Technologies, USA Jason Seip, Firewater Games LLC, USA Vance Souders, Firewater Games LLC, USA Richard Wainess, National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST), USA This chapter describes a recent experience developing a serious game for U.S. Navy recruits to describe a
multi-disciplinary approach to serious game design. They describe their process in terms of the selection of training requirements, the domain and the gaming platform; knowledge acquisition; story develop- ment; game design; initial instructional design; assessment strategy; software development; introductory video; and review, refinement and testing.
Chapter 5 DAU CardSim: Paper Prototyping an Acquisitions Card Game .......................................................... 81 David Metcalf, University of Central Florida, USA Sara Raasch, 42 Entertainment, USA Clarissa Graffeo, University of Central Florida, USA
This chapter describes the development of a multiplayer card game that was first developed as a paper prototype. The chapter provides a post-mortem of the iterative design process that included development of varying levels of simple prototypes for initial design and playtesting, followed by evaluation of game balance and refinement. They also cover the process they employed to digitize the game, and expand the game to cover additional learning objectives.
Chapter 6 Kinesthetic Communication for Learning in Immersive Worlds ........................................................ 102 Christopher Ault, The College of New Jersey, USA Ann Warner-Ault, The College of New Jersey, USA Ursula Wolz, The College of New Jersey, USA Teresa Marrin Nakra, The College of New Jersey, USA This chapter discusses a game design architecture that exploits the pedagogical potential of a rich graphi-
cal environment using a kinesthetic interface. The authors conclude by describing directions for future testing and application of the kinesthetic input devices in serious games.
Section 2
Applications of Serious Games
Our conception of Serious Games is the use of games for any non-entertainment purpose, although the
preponderance of attention has been given to educational or learning games. In this section, we have
included several chapters that are not strictly educational in nature to highlight the fact that other
applications are possible. That said, we believe that the potential application of games to learning
(across settings and age groups) is vast and only beginning to be tapped.Chapter 7 How Games and Simulations can Help Meet America’s Challenges in Science Mathematics and Technology Education ............................................................................................ 117 Henry Kelly, Federation of American Scientists, USA The author addresses three key issues in educational game design: (1) designing the course of instruc-
tion so that it is both rigorously correct and constantly engaging, (2) ensuring that the system adapts to the background and interests of individual learners, and (3) evaluating the expertise of learners in ways that make sense to them and to future employers.
Chapter 8 Games for Peace: Empirical Investigations with PeaceMaker ........................................................... 134 Cleotilde Gonzalez, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Lisa Czlonka, Carnegie Mellon University, USA This chapter describes the use of a video game to conduct empirical investigations designed to build
theoretical models of socio- psychological variables that influence dynamic decision making. Specifically, an investigation on decision making in a dynamic and complex situation, the solution of international conflict and the achievement of peace, using PeaceMaker, a popular video game, is presented.
Chapter 9 Play’s the Thing: A Wager on Healthy Aging ..................................................................................... 150 Mihai Nadin, University of Texas at Dallas, USA This chapter centers on the hypothesis that the aging process results in diminished adaptive abilities
resulting from decreased anticipatory performance. To mitigate the consequences of reduced anticipatory performance, the addresses brain plasticity through game play.
Chapter 10 Re-Purposing a Recreational Video Game as a Serious Game for Second Language Acquisition ......................................................................................................................... 178 Yolanda A. Rankin, IBM Almaden Research Center, USA Marcus W. Shute, Clark Atlanta University, USA The authors report their efforts to re-purpose a recreational game as a serious game to promote learning
in the context of Second Language Acquisition. They outline the process of game transformation, which leverages the entertainment value and readily accessible developer tools of the game.
Section 3
Games in Healthcare
Given the number of high quality proposals we received in the healthcare area, we decided to create a
separate section to highlight this important area. The chapters in this section offer a sampling of the
types of Serious Games being developed in this area. These include: games being used in the therapeutic
process, games to promote healthy behaviors, games to train healthcare professionals and pervasive
health games. These applications, as well as others related to healthcare, have the potential to play an
important role in the future of healthcare in the U.S. and across the world.Chapter 11 Application of Behavioral Theory in Computer Game Design for Health Behavior Change ............ 196 Ross Shegog, UT-School of Public Health, USA The chapter introduces serious game developers to processes, theories, and models that are crucial to
the development of interventions to change health behavior, and describes how these might be applied by the serious games community.
Chapter 12 Avatars and Diagnosis: Delivering Medical Curricula in Virtual Space ............................................ 233 Claudia L. McDonald, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, USA The author describes Pulse!! The Virtual Clinical Learning Lab—a project designed to explore the use of games in health care by developing a reliable and valid learning platform for delivering medical cur- ricula in virtual space. She uses the Pulse!! example to describe lessons learned in the general area of collaboration, including issues such as funding, technology and evaluation.
Chapter 13 Using Serious Games for Mental Health Education ........................................................................... 246 Anya Andrews, Novonics Corporation, Training Technology Lab (TTL), USA Rachel Joyce, University of Central Florida, USA Clint Bowers, University of Central Florida, USA The chapter addresses the mental health training and education needs of modern “at risk” populations and discuss the potential of serious games as effective interventions for addressing those needs. Chapter 14 Pervasive Health Games ..................................................................................................................... 260 Martin Knöll, University of Stuttgart, Germany The author describes the potentials of serious game applications in a health context to improve user’s
motivation, education and therapy compliance. He focuses on “Pervasive Health Games”, which combine pervasive computing technologies with serious game design strategies.
from an Alternate Reality Game ......................................................................................................... 270
Jeanne D. Johnston, Indiana University, USA Lee Sheldon, Indiana University, USA Anne P. Massey, Indiana University, USA
The authors investigated the effectiveness of a prototype Alternate Reality Game – called The Skeleton Chase – in influencing physical activity and wellness of college-age students.
Section 4
The Way Ahead: The Future of Serious Games
This section includes chapters that focus on looking toward the future of serious games. Specifically,
it addresses how to establish a science of serious game design that is meant to stimulate research and
applications. In addition, it includes a commentary on the way ahead in Serious Games.Chapter 16 Establishing a Science of Game Based Learning ............................................................................... 290 Alicia Sanchez, Defense Acquisition University, USA Jan Cannon-Bowers, University of Central Florida, USA Clint Bowers, University of Central Florida, USA
The authors offer a simple framework for organizing variables important in the learning process and then discuss findings from psychology and education as a basis to formulate a research agenda for game- based training. The goal of the framework is to stimulate researchers to conduct systematic, appropriately controlled experiments that will provide insight into how various game features affect motivation and learning.
Chapter 17 The Way Ahead in Serious Games ...................................................................................................... 305 Jan Cannon-Bowers, University of Central Florida, USA
- The author summarizes the major themes that emerge from the previous chapters and offers some obser vations and presents suggestions for the way ahead in Serious Games and their application to important societal challenges.
Compilation of References ............................................................................................................... 311
About the Contributors .................................................................................................................... 341
Index ................................................................................................................................................... 352 xiv Foreword: Does Game Technology Matter?
Among the ruins of ancient Egypt there are multiple references to games that were popular among the Pharaohs. The remains and images of the game of Senet date back to 3,000BC. This board game con- tains features similar to modern checkers and a method of play reminiscent of a horse race around the board. Though primarily a game for entertainment, it was also used as a mystic tool to foretell the future. Egyptians believed that the square that a player’s piece ended on contained special significance about what would happen to the person in the future. Though we would consider this superstition, the players at that time took the results as guidance on decisions about commerce, farming, religion, or family.
Around 1,400BC the game of Mancala emerged in Africa. It was a tool used to account for livestock and crops, and a form of entertainment. Tribesmen used the board and stones to negotiate the trade of goods, and perhaps to gamble for a better exchange. But they also passed the time in the fields playing a version of Mancala that had no economic consequences, but was purely a form of entertainment.
In 1956, Charles Roberts developed the components of the modern board wargame as a tool to help him prepare for his commissioning in the U.S. Army. But by 1958 he realized the commercial value of this wargame and created the Avalon Hill game company to market it to thousands of avid “armchair generals” who were eager to test and develop their own tactical military skills, but for entertainment. For the next four decades Avalon Hill and several competitors created wargames for both entertainment and military training.
Were these games primarily and initially entertainment or serious tools for guiding life decisions? There was really no hard division between the two purposes. There is no law of nature that says tools for education and training cannot be enjoyable to use, or that such tools cannot be inspired by or created from applications that were initially entertainment. The dual nature of games has been with us for at least 5,000 years. Today we may have replaced dice made from sheep knucklebones for computerized, pseudo-random number generation algorithms, but we continue to look to the results of game play for insight into important problems in our lives. Now we place our faith in the accuracy of mathematical and logical algorithms rather than the mystical forces influencing the roll of the die, but we continue to construct games that can challenge our thinking and guide us to a better understanding of the world.
What is a Game?
What makes some activities and tools into games, while others are considered completely serious tools? In his 1970 book entitled Serious Games , Clark Abt defined a game with these words, “reduced to its formal essence, a game is an activity among two or more independent decision-makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context. A more conventional definition would say that a game is a context with rules among adversaries trying to win objectives.” In a 2005 issue of IEEE Com- xv puter
, Mike Zyda defined a game as, “a physical or mental contest, played according to specific rules, with the goal of amusing or rewarding the participant.” He went on to suggest that a serious game was, “a mental contest, played with a computer in accordance with specific rules that uses entertainment to further government or corporate training, education, health, public policy, and strategic communication objectives.” Zyda explicitly points to the desirable goal of using “entertainment” to further the goals of the organization, to harness entertainment, fun, engagement, challenge, and trail-and-error to get people to learn more or to learn faster.
Academics like Andrew Hargadon at University of Southern California explore the difficulties involved in adopting tools and practices from other industries. There is a psychological, social, and professional barrier that keeps people from accepting ideas that were “not invented here.” The barrier between “serious business” and “frivolous entertainment” is even higher, wider, and deeper than those between industrial professions. Industries may adopt new computers, networks, materials, and energy sources. But reaching into the entertainment industry for something that can improve effectiveness is considered quite a daring and questionable move.
Game technoloGy
Games have created and introduced new technologies for centuries. Ancient games offered numbered throwing sticks, the predecessors to dice and random number generators, as a means of making decisions with limited information. Board wargames of the 1950’s introduced the hexagonal tessellation of terrain, a concept that is still used in cellular communications models as an approximation to the circular area covered by a tower. Charles Roberts introduced the combat results table as a means of enriching the military results from the throw of a die. Today all military models use extensive algorithms to make deci- sions, but often retain a random number generator as a nondeterministic influence in those algorithms.
Currently it is difficult to determine whether computer hardware and software technologies are
“game technologies” or “serious technologies”. Graphics cards, network cards, and multi-core chips are all essential for the play of the latest computer games. But should they be tagged as serious or entertain- ment technologies? Does it matter? Does it help?
Recently the gaming industry has been the source of some of the best software technologies on the market. The 3D scene generators or game engines are far superior in performance and features to competing applications created in serious industries and academia. Game companies have adopted the principles of man-machine interfaces and effective graphical user interfaces to create complex applications for which no user’s manual is required. But similar interfaces in serious industries can be so complex that multi-day courses are required to learn to use them. Games have isolated the most essential phys- ics and human behavior features such that they can be incorporated into an application that can run on a consumer PC. They are certainly not the highest fidelity models of physics or artificial intelligence, but they are the most accessible and among most useful. Multiplayer games have advanced networking protocols and libraries so that players can join the virtual world from anyplace on the planet. But what serious industry applications provide this type of ad hoc collaboration?
The financial incentives and the personal energy that drive the creation of new technologies in the game industry have led to technologies that are just too valuable to be excluded from other serious industrial applications. All industries have got to take these technologies seriously or risk being passed by competitors who will use them. xvi
Does Game technoloGy matter?
Game technologies have been adopted for military training, medical education, emergency management, city planning, spacecraft engineering, architectural design, religious proselyzation, political communica- tion, movie making, and advertising – to name a few. These are far from being the dominant applications in any of these fields. But they gain ground every year as young game players become serious business people and as older business people become more avid game players. The barriers are falling. Each year more people are able to peer through the science fiction veneer of a space game and see the powerful computer science beneath. They understand the advantages of putting this technology to use, and doing so before a competitor does the same. In his 2003
Harvard Business Review article entitled “IT Doesn’t
Matter”, Nicholas Carr shook up the business and the IT worlds with his observation that IT initially provided a competitive advantage. But after mass adoption, all industries had harnessed its power, and
IT became as essential to modern business as electricity had been to the industrial revolution. It had transcended its own uniqueness and become essential. If game technology is as successful, it will lose its niche status to become an essential part of running an effective and profitable business.
Roger Smith references Abt, C. (1970). Serious games. New York: The Viking Press.
Beck, J.C. and Wade, M. (2004). Got game: How the gamer generation is reshaping business forever. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Carr, N. (May 2003). “IT doesn’t matter”.
Harvard Business Review
Michael, D and Chen, S. (2005). Serious games: Games that educate, train, and inform. New York: Thompson Publishing. Orbanes, P.E. (2004). The Game makers: The Story of Parker Brothers. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Perla, P. (1990). The Art of wargaming. Naval Institute Press. Smith, R. (January 2006). “Technology disruption in the simulation industry”. Journal of Defense Modeling and Simulation. Zyda, M. (September 2005). “From visual simulation to virtual reality to games”. IEEE Computer. xvii
Preface
As many have observed, the use of video game techniques and technologies for purposes other than purely entertainment has gained attention in recent years. So called serious games—those that have a non-entertainment purpose—are beginning to be developed in a variety of settings, including healthcare, education, and workplace learning. Despite the popularity of serious games, however, there are only now beginning to be rigorous attempts to guide application of the technologies, and evaluation of their ability to meet their intended goals. The purpose of this volume is to provide a cross section of the work being done in this burgeoning area.
The volume is organized around three themes: Design Principles for Serious Games, Applications of Serious Games, Games in Healthcare, The Way Ahead: A Roadmap for the Future of Serious Games. We should note that we did not necessarily intend to pull Healthcare out as a separate section, but we received so many quality chapter proposals in this area that we decided to group them together. This may be a function of the funding available to study health-related games (e.g., Robert Woods Johnson Foundation’s Games for Health program) or attention being given to this area (e.g., the annual Games for Health Conference and Healthcare reform in general). In any case, much good work is taking place in this sector and will hopefully transfer over to other application areas.
The following sections describe the major themes of the book, along with a description of the chapters that fall within them.
This section provides several different perspectives on designing and developing serious games. Each chapter offers a design principle or strategy that can be employed to enhance the effectiveness of serious games. Several also include lessons learned drawn from specific serious game development efforts.
In the chapter entitled “Mini-Games with Major Impacts,” Smith and Sanchez describe a strategy for developing mini games that can be embedded in game-based training. These authors address how mini-games can be used for conceptual or procedural knowledge and provide theoretical arguments from: Cognitive Learning Theory, Social Cognitive Theory, and Motivation. They also present descriptions of several case studies that used mini-games as part of the learning strategy. Smith & Sanchez conclude that mini-games have become sophisticated enough to be included in serious games.
McDaniel, Fiore, and Nicholson then discuss the importance of narrative in serious games in their chapter, “
Serious Storytelling: Narrative Considerations for Serious Games Researchers and Develop- ers
.” Specifically, they highlight the congruence between the game’s story and its learning content as a mechanism to enhance the player’s immersion in the game. These authors contend that narrative aids can help in game design in several ways, including: increasing the player’s motivation to remain in the game, stories can embed learning objectives, and narrative can tie together elements in the game into xviii
a coherent whole. They go on to cover selected narratological principles, interactive narratology, and then present a preliminary narrative taxonomy to guide research and development. They conclude with implications for the field.
In the chapter by Blasko-Drabik, Smoker, and Murphy, “An Adventure in Usability: Discovering Us-
ability Where it was not Expected ,” these authors define usability as it is employed in software design. As
with other software applications, it is important to establish the usability of a serious game to ensure that poor interface design does not interfere with learning. These authors describe the goals of usability and how it is traditionally performed using two popular methods. They go on to discuss appropriate usability measures for serious games. They compare two major methods and then conclude with a description of how usability analyses can be used to improve game design.
Next, Hussain and colleagues use a recent experience developing a serious game for U.S. Navy recruits to describe a multi-disciplinary approach to serious game design. In the chapter entitled, “De-
velopment of Game-Based Training Systems: Lessons Learned in an Inter-Disciplinary Field in the
Making ”, these authors begin with a number of theoretical justifications for using games in learning,
and then describe the process they employed in developing the serious game. Specifically, they describe their process in terms of the selection of training requirements, the domain and the gaming platform; knowledge acquisition; story development; game design; initial instructional design; assessment strategy; software development; introductory video; and review, refinement and testing. In each of the sections, they identify a number of tensions that need to be resolved as the game is being developed. They go on to provide lessons learned by describing how each of the tensions was resolved. These lessons learned can be of use to future serious game designers.
In the chapter entitled, “DAU CardSim: Paper Prototyping an Acquisitions Card Game”, Metcalf, Raasch, and Graffeo describe development of a multiplayer card game that was first developed as a paper prototype. The game, a multiplayer scenario-based card game, was designed to teach skills as- sociated with Department of Defense acquisition procedures and teamwork. The chapter provides a post-mortem of the iterative design process that included development of varying levels of simple pro- totypes for initial design and playtesting, followed by evaluation of game balance and refinement. They also cover the process they employed to digitize the game, and expand the game to cover additional learning objectives. Finally, they provide a series of lessons learned as they relate to paper prototyping as a design strategy.
The final chapter in this section, “Kinesthetic Communication for Learning in Immersive Worlds”, by Ault, Warner-Ault, Wolz, and Nakra, posits a game design architecture that exploits the pedagogi- cal potential of a rich graphical environment using a kinesthetic interface (such as the one used by the Nintendo Wii). They explain that their approach is grounded in the game’s content so that genuine learning can occur in context. Furthermore, the kinesthetic interface is consistent with research showing that movement-based methods are more effective in language learning than more traditional methods. The authors conclude by describing directions for future testing and application of the kinesthetic input devices in serious games.
Section 2: Applications of Serious Games
As noted, our conception of Serious Games is the use of games for any non-entertainment purpose, al- though the preponderance of attention has been given to educational or learning games. In this section, we have included several chapters that are not strictly educational in nature to highlight the fact that other applications are possible. That said, we believe that the potential application of games to learning (across settings and age groups) is vast and only beginning to be tapped. xix
To begin this section, Kelly provides compelling statistics showing that the quality of education in the U.S. is in dire need of improvement in his chapter, “How Games and Simulations can Help Meet
America’s Challenges in Science Mathematics and Technology Education.” Fortunately, he contends
that modern technology has the potential to make learning more productive, more engaging, and more closely tailored to the interests and backgrounds of individual learners. According to Kelly, computer games provide a particularly good example of what can be achieved because they often require players to master complex skills to advance in the game. He goes on to address three key issues in educational game design: (1) designing the course of instruction so that it is both rigorously correct and constantly engaging, (2) ensuring that the system adapts to the background and interests of individual learners, and (3) evaluating the expertise of learners in ways that make sense to them and to future employers, using a game called “Immune Attack” as his example.
In the next chapter, “Games for Peace: Empirical Investigations with PeaceMaker,” Gonzalez and Czlonka provide a example of using a video game to conduct empirical investigations designed to build theoretical models of socio- psychological variables that influence dynamic decision making. Specifi- cally, they present an investigation on decision making in a dynamic and complex situation, the solu- tion of international conflict and the achievement of peace, using PeaceMaker, a popular video game.
PeaceMaker represents the historical conditions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and provides players with an opportunity to resolve the conflict. Students in an Arab-Israeli history course played perspec- tives of the Israeli and Palestinian leaders at the beginning and end of the semester. Student actions were recorded and analyzed along with information about their personality, religious, political affiliation, trust attitude, and number of gaming hours per week. The authors offer several conclusions regarding the manner in which these variables affect conflict resolution, hence the game served as a mechanism to better understand the phenomenon of interest. Many other applications of this approach to sutdy human behavior in complex systems seem obvious.
Nadin begins the next chapter, “Play’s the Thing: A Wager on Healthy Aging,” with the hypothesis that the aging process results in diminished adaptive abilities resulting from decreased anticipatory performance. To mitigate the consequences of reduced anticipatory performance, he addresses brain plasticity through game play. Since anticipation is expressed in action, the games conceived, designed, and produced for triggering brain plasticity need to engage the sensory, cognitive, and motoric aspects of performance. Nadin offers a rich theoretical foundation upon which to design and validate such games.
A popular notion among those developing serious games is that entertainment games can be repur- posed to accomplish serious objectives. In their chapter, “
Re-Purposing a Recreational Video Game as
a Serious Game for Second Language Acquisition,” Rankin and Shute describe efforts to re-purpose the
®recreational Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) EverQuest
II as a serious game to promote learning in the context of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). They outline the pro- cess of game transformation, which leverages the entertainment value and readily accessible developer tools of the game. They identify the affordances attributed to MMORPGs and then evaluate the impact of gameplay experiences on SLA. Promising results are described.
Section 3: Games in Healthcare
Given the number of high quality proposals we received in the healthcare area, we decided to create a separate section to highlight this important area. The chapters in this section offer a sampling of the types of Serious Games being developed in this area. These include: games being used in the therapeutic process, games to promote healthy behaviors, games to train healthcare professionals, and pervasive health games. These applications, as well as others related to healthcare, have the potential to play an important role in the future of healthcare in the U.S. and across the world. xx
In the introductory chapter in this section, “Application of Behavioral Theory in Computer Game
Design for Health Behavior Change,” Shegog provides an excellent overview of behavioral theories and
how they might be used to promote health behaviors. The chapter introduces serious game developers to processes, theories, and models that are crucial to the development of interventions to change health behavior, and describes how these might be applied by the serious games community. Shegog goes on to describe the protocols, theories, and models that have informed the development of interventions in health behavior change and reviews them in terms of their potential contribution to serious game design, implementation, and evaluation. The author describes a serious game application aimed at cognitive- based gaming in adolescents to exemplify this.