By Katharina Gugerell.
What are serious games? What are their benefits? What is involved in developing serious games?
Serious games are digital, analogue or hybrid games designed in a way that goes beyond pure entertainment. They aim to educate or inform players or evoke discussions and conversations and provide an environment for futuring processes – in various fields, such as land-use, healthcare, water management, commons or natural hazards.
By integrating engaging gameplay elements with real-world scenarios or real-world contexts, serious games are expected to facilitate (different forms of) learning, interaction, world-building and scenario-building, as well as critical reflection on social, cultural, consumption and production practice. These games can incorporate real-time simulations, joint problem solving, and interactive storytelling to immerse participants into the topic. Serious games are celebrated for their motivational, emotional and entertaining aspects, that allow players to become familiar with different perspectives of complex problems or engage in futuring processes in a very intuitive and emotional way.
Serious games can be powerful tools but also require a lot of time, thought and resources to be developed and implemented, which has proven difficult for many different contexts. Often full-fledged games are not required, instead single or combined gameful elements or gameful activities can also support planning, governance or futuring processes. However, it is crucial to remain critical and reflect on potential biases, power dimensions and hidden normative dimensions that games inherit.
Two previous i2Insights contributions illustrate the versatility and diversity of ludic approaches. They also show the differences between gamefulness and playfulness: while the contribution by Garcia, Dray and Waeber (2017), on Learning to tackle wicked problems through games, presents rule-based games and their value for understanding wicked problems either in educational or governance settings, the contribution by Greenlee, Jerant and Stanich (2023), on Using the arts to flip understanding, shows more playful arts-based approaches. Gameful or playful mainly relies on how rule-based the activity is.
Both developing and playing serious games allows players to:
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- encounter complex challenges
- experiment and learn from failures in a risk-free environment
- take on different roles and perspectives, gaining empathy and insight into the motivations and challenges faced by various actors in the issue under consideration
- playfully co-create different approaches and solutions
- build trust, partnerships, and individual and collective agency.
Developing a serious game
Serious games are often co-designed, leveraging the expertise of diverse actors and groups, including domain experts, citizens, policy makers, researchers and game designers. Co-design aims to produce a tailor-made and versatile learning experience, catering to the players’ needs, interests, preferences and values.
There is no standard recipe for developing a serious game, but the steps described below are common. However, it is advisable to involve competent and experienced game designers in the development process. Scientific practice shows that better quality and playability can be expected if game designers or people with notable game design expertise are responsible for the core game design parts, while other co-designers (eg., scientists, local case actors, etc.) contribute more content-related parts and play-test the game. Power asymmetries can affect the decision-making and design processes, resulting in the marginalization of certain actor perspectives and knowledge types or the reproduction of real-world power asymmetries in the game.
There are different frameworks and protocols that provide a basis, and various steps, for serious game design. Here I share some key lessons for different steps based on previous projects.
Setting the game’s target audience, with regard to age, gender, sociocultural background. Some game types and genres are more popular and suitable for specific age groups, learning styles and player types. The ‘broader’ a game is, the more elaborate and complex its game design becomes and the more resources (time, finances) are likely required. The selection of player target groups influences which learning objectives or learning experiences are adequate (eg., is it about young people? is it about young people engaging in an intergenerational dialogue with senior citizens?) This decision also influences the design of adequate game formats and contents.
What should be learned and/or experienced. Experiences and leaning can pursue different goals, such as knowledge retainment (eg., on migration, watersheds, hazard management, etc.), capacity building on skills (eg., training of surgeons), exchange of experiences and/or perspectives on certain topics (eg., climate change anxiety, consumption practices), questioning (mental) models and reflecting on societal issues, or jointly experimenting with the future development of neighbourhoods. The learning and experiential purposes can be manifold. Also, in that case, it pays to make sure the game is not overloaded with too many goals.
Choose a suitable genre and create a captivating and interesting game story. The genre (eg., role-playing-game, tabletop game, simulation game) supports the experiential objectives and impacts how effectively the game can deliver the expected learning/experience outcomes. While digital games allow the integration of real-time data, big data sets and very immersive experiences, they also require substantial technical and programming expertise, not only during the development process, but probably also for subsequent changes or alterations to the game. On the other hand, analogue games offer a more low-tech approach, quicker prototyping and the option to manually change and adapt game elements. Creating a captivating and fetching game-story (eg., game characters, story line, suitable language and wording) is important since it’s a crucial part of a good game.
Devise the gameplay. This organises how players interact with other players and with the game itself. The mechanics that structure and pace the gameplay work in the background in relation to the decisions that players take in the game. Basic mechanics include levels, reward systems, management and brokering resources, progression, role-play, time limits or sanctions. The combination of such mechanics influences how the game ‘works’ and its pace. Pacing the game is crucial: when it is too slow, players might get bored or distracted, while good balance between faster and slower parts and actions of the game keeps the game enjoyable.
Debriefing is key. Without a proper debriefing a game is just a game. Gaming (playing) and debriefing belong together. Debriefing is where the entertaining fun part turns into deeper forms of reflection and learning through discussion, review and reflection on the gaming experience and the outcome of the game. Debriefing is a guided and facilitated reflection that refocuses the gamers on the meaning of the gaming experience, rather than the gaming itself (playing the game). Research provides evidence that serious games are more effective when they are debriefed; without debriefing the experience and knowledge gained might remain intangible and subliminal. Debriefing can take place in various forms and combinations, such as joint discussions, media, or written reports or stories. It requires sufficient time and a non-judgmental and culturally-aware environment.
Conclusion
The most critical challenge for serious games is that while simplification of real-world complexities is required to provide a game that is playable and fun, there is a risk of oversimplification that can result in a superficial understanding and representation of the specific issues. Such oversimplification will very likely also impact both the gaming and reflection during the debriefing, and might lead to unbalanced learning outcomes.
What is your experience with designing and playing serious games? What has worked well? Have you identified other challenges?
To find out more:
This abridged text is based on Gugerell, K. (2023). Serious games for sustainability transformations: Participatory research methods for sustainability ‐ toolkit #7. GAIA – Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, 32: 292–295. (Online – open access) (DOI): https://doi.org/10.14512/gaia.32.3.5
To see all blog posts from the partnership with the journal GAIA: https://i2insights.org/tag/partner-gaia-journal/
Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement: Generative artificial intelligence was not used in the development of this i2Insights contribution. (For i2Insights policy on generative artificial intelligence please see https://i2insights.org/contributing-to-i2insights/guidelines-for-authors/#artificial-intelligence).
Biography: Katharina Gugerell PhD is Associate Professor for Sustainable Land Use and Head of the Institute for Landscape Planning at BOKU University (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences) in Vienna, Austria. Her research interests include land-use-governance, creative and foresight methods, governance of protected areas, transdisciplinarity and policy studies.