Discussion about Serious Games : Their lacks and forces

Question

I would like to start a little discussion about serious video games. Do you think serious games DO have their place in today's world ? What kind of serious games do you think the most interesting in term of education / work tools ?

I've recently read an article about the educational power of such games in early ages. Do you think serious video games could become a ubiquitous learning tool in primary school ?

Any experience, title share or ideas are heightly appreciated, I want to get a feel of this question from experienced game developper that are interested of writing an answer !

Answer 1

I know serious games have gained a lot of momentum over the past few years, with the growth of the simulation industry, and are beginning to gain more and more attention in the game industry, as serious game developers have started utilizing commercial game technologies.

Do I think serious games have a place in today's world? Absolutely! Video games are an incredibly powerful medium, and I think that leveraging the medium to educate, train, and raise awareness of important topics is something we as a community should wholeheartedly embrace. That being said, I do believe there is still a lot of value to traditional education and learning, and that the best use of serious games is as a supplement to traditional education, not as a replacement.

Are serious games new? Absolutely not! Although it wasn't too long ago, I remember playing a number of educational video games in my youth - and between you and me, I remember a couple of them being a lot more fun than some of today's supposed AAA games. :P

Resources

Here are some resources I think you may find useful in your quest for information on serious games:

• Organizations & Communities
  • Serious Games Initiative
  • Games for Change
• Conferences and Events
  • Games for Health Conference
  • Games for Change Festival
  • The Power of Design: Youth Making Social Issue
  • Games, Learning, and Society Conference
  • Future Play
  • I/ITSEC
• Video Games
  • Wikipedia listing of "Children's Educational Video Games"

This list is by no means definitive, but my hope is that these resources will give you a good starting point for your research. :)

Answer 2

I'm not sure why this is "today's world": growing up in the 80s, I have fond memories of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, Reader Rabbit and Math Rabbit, Number Munchers, and the various standalone Speak and Spell devices.

I work in a game company now. We do maybe 70% commercial titles to keep the company busy, but the remaining 30% are educational, philanthropic, or otherwise socially responsible. We've done or prototyped (often for academia or government or both) games targeted at teaching science to young kids, games to teach better practices to third world denizens, and even games to help people with specific health issues.

We also regularly aim our commercial games slightly high for the intended audience, at least in terms of dialogue and story. I like to think of this as the "Rocky and Bullwinkle" phenomenon: you can teach kids very well by having something that is basically fun, zany, and engaging, and throw in more "adult" themes. Almost all of Jim Henson's work falls in this category too.

The lines blur a bit. I'm not sure I like the term "serious games" due to the connotations of "serious"; people play complicated flight or submarine simulators for fun, health-related games are often more effective with fun and/or addictive content, and on the opposite end of the spectrum, children learn more when their zany entertainment has a literate, political, social, or scientific underpinning.

The goal is to prey upon our nature: find something that sparks the desire to explore, to create, to solve problems, or even to compete. Get to a place we'll naturally be intrigued or enjoying ourselves, where we'll naturally want to do more (play more of the game, do more related activities or exploration) and the learning follows.

I don't ever see games taking over entire cirricula. I think you need balance between forms of learning, otherwise you wear things out and you don't form as many associations to strengthen knowledge.

But I do strongly believe that games will make a great part of that particular balanced breakfast. Even for adults concerned with ongoing education and expansion of their abilities; even for reflex training, exercise, or the like.

As an aside, you may be interested in Games in Education; it's a conference held in the northeast each year, which is fairly teacher-centric. Many educators come to speak about their experiences using games to teach -- what has worked, what hasn't, etc. There should be video on the site, somewhere.

Answer 3

Great question. I am currently working in the education department as a developer in Australia. My role, and the people I work with, is to create resources to be used by teachers and students.

In the past year or so we have been pushing hard to try and develop more game orientated solutions. The great thing about using games as a teaching tool is that kids don't realise that they are learning, to them it is a fun game, but in the process they are learning and thinking.

Traditionally we have developed fairly boring multiple choice forms, drag and drop activities, etc. The problem with these activities is that it does not really engage students to think (who can blame them). If they want, they can just randomly click until they get something right. This passive learning has limited value. Games on the other hand force a child to actively think, I mean how many times have we subconsciously learnt things when playing AAA "non educational" games?

So if a game has educational value, then it's a win/win scenario - they get to have fun while they learn. Also, this will help foster an environment where they enjoy and look forward to "learning", which is one of the hardest things to achieve.

Unfortunately, being a lowly developer means that our vision and ideas are often overlooked. It certainly has been a struggle to create the few games that we have done. Managers tend to be much older and perhaps have not been exposed to games in the same way that Gen Y has. Perhaps there is also the association that games mean fun only and school shouldn't be fun :S