We investigate the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based techniques in learning to play a 2-player, real-time strategy (RTS) game called Hunting-of-the-Plark. The game is challenging to play for both humans and AI-based techniques because players cannot observe each other's moves while playing the game and one player is at a disadvantage due to the asymmetric nature of the game rules. We analyze the performance of different deep reinforcement learning algorithms to train software agents that can play the game. Existing reinforcement learning techniques for RTS games enable players to converge towards an equilibrium outcome of the game but usually do not facilitate further exploration of techniques to exploit and defeat the opponent. To address this shortcoming, we investigate techniques including self-play and strategy diversity that can be used by players to improve their performance beyond the equilibrium outcome. We observe that when players use self-play, their number of wins begins to cycle around an equilibrium value as each player quickly learns to outwit and defeat its opponent and vice-versa. Finally, we show that strategy diversity could be used as an effective means to alleviate the performance of the disadvantaged player caused by the asymmetric nature of the game.
{"title":"Improved Reinforcement Learning in Asymmetric Real-time Strategy Games via Strategy Diversity: A Case Study for Hunting-of-the-Plark Game","authors":"P. Dasgupta, John A. Kliem","doi":"10.17083/ijsg.v10i1.548","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17083/ijsg.v10i1.548","url":null,"abstract":"We investigate the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based techniques in learning to play a 2-player, real-time strategy (RTS) game called Hunting-of-the-Plark. The game is challenging to play for both humans and AI-based techniques because players cannot observe each other's moves while playing the game and one player is at a disadvantage due to the asymmetric nature of the game rules. We analyze the performance of different deep reinforcement learning algorithms to train software agents that can play the game. Existing reinforcement learning techniques for RTS games enable players to converge towards an equilibrium outcome of the game but usually do not facilitate further exploration of techniques to exploit and defeat the opponent. To address this shortcoming, we investigate techniques including self-play and strategy diversity that can be used by players to improve their performance beyond the equilibrium outcome. We observe that when players use self-play, their number of wins begins to cycle around an equilibrium value as each player quickly learns to outwit and defeat its opponent and vice-versa. Finally, we show that strategy diversity could be used as an effective means to alleviate the performance of the disadvantaged player caused by the asymmetric nature of the game.","PeriodicalId":196187,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Serious Games","volume":"58 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124538681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper presents an effort for introducing children rights to preschool students transcending conventional methods. An educational intervention was designed and developed for the introduction of preschoolers to issues of survival, development, non-discrimination and protection rights through digital games. The latter were used in online sessions, due to Covid-19 constraints. Educational effectiveness was studied through qualitative analysis of interviews with children before and after the intervention, through questionnaires regarding their degree of fun, and through the projects and the comments they produced during online sessions. Results showed that, following the intervention, individual rights occupied a more central place in the children’s self-awareness. All children approached the issues of rights in relation to the improvement of the quality of life and demonstrated an ethical reasoning regarding the reciprocity of social rules. Digital games mobilized children's creative thinking, dialogue and social reflection through role-playing in distant instructional scenarios. They became useful tools as an asynchronous activity for the creative expression of social messages as well as for the interaction between children and parents. This study highlights the potential of promoting a critical approach to rights-based social issues through digital games at preschool education, as well as the need for developing serious games explicitly focused on children rights education. At the same time, further research is necessary to explore and cross-reference the views of students and parents on children rights for, and through, the use of digital games.
{"title":"Children's rights education via game-based activities: An intervention in kindergarten","authors":"Theonia Sakka, D. Gouscos","doi":"10.17083/ijsg.v10i1.546","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17083/ijsg.v10i1.546","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents an effort for introducing children rights to preschool students transcending conventional methods. An educational intervention was designed and developed for the introduction of preschoolers to issues of survival, development, non-discrimination and protection rights through digital games. The latter were used in online sessions, due to Covid-19 constraints. Educational effectiveness was studied through qualitative analysis of interviews with children before and after the intervention, through questionnaires regarding their degree of fun, and through the projects and the comments they produced during online sessions. Results showed that, following the intervention, individual rights occupied a more central place in the children’s self-awareness. All children approached the issues of rights in relation to the improvement of the quality of life and demonstrated an ethical reasoning regarding the reciprocity of social rules. Digital games mobilized children's creative thinking, dialogue and social reflection through role-playing in distant instructional scenarios. They became useful tools as an asynchronous activity for the creative expression of social messages as well as for the interaction between children and parents. This study highlights the potential of promoting a critical approach to rights-based social issues through digital games at preschool education, as well as the need for developing serious games explicitly focused on children rights education. At the same time, further research is necessary to explore and cross-reference the views of students and parents on children rights for, and through, the use of digital games.","PeriodicalId":196187,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Serious Games","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116552444","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Teaching is changing with increasing emphasis on teaching digitally to enable remote learning. While it gives more opportunities to engage students, it also makes it harder to learn professional skills, which is especially important for the engineering field. One problem might be the lack of professional tools for the digital education of engineers. The purpose of this work is to assess the feasibility of creating digital educational games by shaping professional tools themselves as games for post-secondary education, and to develop a framework for such a process. This article demonstrates a case for applying the proposed framework to develop a game for a communication network course using a computer network simulator. The findings of this work highlight the need to create such games in higher education based on professional tools.
{"title":"Framework for Using Professional Engineering Tools to Develop Games in Post-Secondary Education","authors":"Maksims Kornevs, Harsha Krishna, I. Orhan","doi":"10.17083/ijsg.v10i1.542","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17083/ijsg.v10i1.542","url":null,"abstract":"Teaching is changing with increasing emphasis on teaching digitally to enable remote learning. While it gives more opportunities to engage students, it also makes it harder to learn professional skills, which is especially important for the engineering field. One problem might be the lack of professional tools for the digital education of engineers. The purpose of this work is to assess the feasibility of creating digital educational games by shaping professional tools themselves as games for post-secondary education, and to develop a framework for such a process. This article demonstrates a case for applying the proposed framework to develop a game for a communication network course using a computer network simulator. The findings of this work highlight the need to create such games in higher education based on professional tools.","PeriodicalId":196187,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Serious Games","volume":"72 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132671801","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Maxence Laurent, Sandra Monnier, Audrey Huguenin, Pierre-Benjamin Monaco, D. Jaccard
Serious game development involves a multidisciplinary team of teachers and computer scientists. But the difference in computer competencies between the team members is a recurring difficulty in this collaboration. Authoring tools, which provide interfaces adapted to users' competencies, are promising solutions to overcome this difficulty. However, existing authoring tools are either limited in their functionalities (not powerful) or too complex for non-computer scientists (not usable). A comprehensive set of design principles to address this limitation does not yet exist. The objective of this research was to define a set of design principles for the development of powerful and usable authoring tools. To achieve this objective, we first defined a set of design principles. We then developed an authoring tool corresponding to these principles. Finally, we carried out test uses of that tool through the development of twelve serious games. Results show that this authoring tool enabled the development of a wide variety of serious games (powerful) by teams with heterogeneous computer skills (usable). Design principles defined in this research integrate and extend previous works. They allow to overcome the dilemma between the power and usability of authoring tools. This could unlock new possibilities for collaborative approaches in serious games developments.
{"title":"Design Principles for Serious Games Authoring Tool","authors":"Maxence Laurent, Sandra Monnier, Audrey Huguenin, Pierre-Benjamin Monaco, D. Jaccard","doi":"10.17083/ijsg.v9i4.458","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17083/ijsg.v9i4.458","url":null,"abstract":"Serious game development involves a multidisciplinary team of teachers and computer scientists. But the difference in computer competencies between the team members is a recurring difficulty in this collaboration. Authoring tools, which provide interfaces adapted to users' competencies, are promising solutions to overcome this difficulty. However, existing authoring tools are either limited in their functionalities (not powerful) or too complex for non-computer scientists (not usable). A comprehensive set of design principles to address this limitation does not yet exist.\u0000The objective of this research was to define a set of design principles for the development of powerful and usable authoring tools.\u0000To achieve this objective, we first defined a set of design principles. We then developed an authoring tool corresponding to these principles. Finally, we carried out test uses of that tool through the development of twelve serious games. Results show that this authoring tool enabled the development of a wide variety of serious games (powerful) by teams with heterogeneous computer skills (usable).\u0000Design principles defined in this research integrate and extend previous works. They allow to overcome the dilemma between the power and usability of authoring tools. This could unlock new possibilities for collaborative approaches in serious games developments.","PeriodicalId":196187,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Serious Games","volume":"705 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116121290","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Digital educational games have evolved in recent years due to the need to support education and training focused on non-technical skills. Data gathered through interaction with the graphical user interface are explored and exploited to analyze the players' experience. Many researchers have pointed the importance of analysis of players’ in-game behavior, which can help to enhance the learning process, identify learners' strategies, and improve the effectiveness of the serious game. This study is devoted to the analysis of students' behavior in a simulation game called CLONE, which targets work scheduling, situation awareness, and decision-making. The students’ performance and their behavioral strategies are examined based on sequences analysis of players' in-game actions. Moreover, outlier detection is proposed as an instrument for obtaining information that might help better understand students’ behavior. The findings of the study show that such indicators as time spent on planning schedule, time spent on inspecting additional information, and intensity of delegation activity are significantly higher for successful games than for lost ones. The sequences analysis and clustering reveal students' prevailing in-game strategies, which mostly consist of inspection, reading medical records, delegation, and scheduling. Eventually, outlier detection discloses the game sessions with uncertain strategies and unstructured scheduling.
{"title":"Examining Students' Behavior in a Digital Simulation Game for Nurse Training","authors":"Daria Novoseltseva, Catherine Pons-Lelardeux, Nadine Baptiste-Jessel","doi":"10.17083/ijsg.v9i4.543","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17083/ijsg.v9i4.543","url":null,"abstract":"Digital educational games have evolved in recent years due to the need to support education and training focused on non-technical skills. Data gathered through interaction with the graphical user interface are explored and exploited to analyze the players' experience. Many researchers have pointed the importance of analysis of players’ in-game behavior, which can help to enhance the learning process, identify learners' strategies, and improve the effectiveness of the serious game. This study is devoted to the analysis of students' behavior in a simulation game called CLONE, which targets work scheduling, situation awareness, and decision-making. The students’ performance and their behavioral strategies are examined based on sequences analysis of players' in-game actions. Moreover, outlier detection is proposed as an instrument for obtaining information that might help better understand students’ behavior. The findings of the study show that such indicators as time spent on planning schedule, time spent on inspecting additional information, and intensity of delegation activity are significantly higher for successful games than for lost ones. The sequences analysis and clustering reveal students' prevailing in-game strategies, which mostly consist of inspection, reading medical records, delegation, and scheduling. Eventually, outlier detection discloses the game sessions with uncertain strategies and unstructured scheduling.","PeriodicalId":196187,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Serious Games","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117349651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The paper presents a conceptual framework and a metric instrument for assisting design and evaluating serious games for dementia family carers as the first step towards designing a game specifically designed to cater for their needs. The paper starts with a literature survey on dementia, dementia family carers and existing games for health issues. From this survey, three components of the carers’ needs (health, education and social), three platforms (social marketing, social media and games) and six game contents (game play, avatar portrayal, game world graphics, sound / music and storyline) were identified, and engagement as the metric of interaction was also identified. With these, a conceptual framework was constructed, identifying the relationship amongst these elements. Based on these, the metric instrument is devised using the Goal Question Metric (GQM) method. An exploratory experiment was conducted with six health-related games and five game professionals to assess the effectiveness of the instrument. It is found that the instrument can identify the successfulness of the games in terms of satisfying the three categories of needs of the carer, i.e., health, education and social, though it was suggested that a further experiment with more participants and focusing on one game would be needed to further verify the effectiveness of the instrument.
{"title":"Designing Serious Game Metrics for Family Caregivers of People with Dementia","authors":"N. Liu, Gary Wills","doi":"10.17083/ijsg.v9i3.532","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17083/ijsg.v9i3.532","url":null,"abstract":"The paper presents a conceptual framework and a metric instrument for assisting design and evaluating serious games for dementia family carers as the first step towards designing a game specifically designed to cater for their needs. The paper starts with a literature survey on dementia, dementia family carers and existing games for health issues. From this survey, three components of the carers’ needs (health, education and social), three platforms (social marketing, social media and games) and six game contents (game play, avatar portrayal, game world graphics, sound / music and storyline) were identified, and engagement as the metric of interaction was also identified. With these, a conceptual framework was constructed, identifying the relationship amongst these elements. Based on these, the metric instrument is devised using the Goal Question Metric (GQM) method. An exploratory experiment was conducted with six health-related games and five game professionals to assess the effectiveness of the instrument. It is found that the instrument can identify the successfulness of the games in terms of satisfying the three categories of needs of the carer, i.e., health, education and social, though it was suggested that a further experiment with more participants and focusing on one game would be needed to further verify the effectiveness of the instrument.","PeriodicalId":196187,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Serious Games","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115361108","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
R. Roepke, Vincent Drury, Ulrike Meyer, U. Schroeder
Anti-phishing learning games are a promising approach to teach end-users about phishing, as they offer a scalable and engaging environment for active learning. Existing games have been criticized for their limited game mechanics that do not allow for detailed assessment of the players' acquired knowledge, instead focusing mostly on factual and conceptual knowledge to remember or understand. To extend the research field, this paper presents the design and evaluation of two new anti-phishing learning games: The first game implements an extended classification mechanic to better assess the player's decision process, while the second game implements a different game mechanic, which requires players to combine URL parts to construct their own phishing URLs. We compare the games with each other and with a baseline implementation that uses binary decisions similar to existing games in a user study with 133 participants. The study shows, that while all three games lead to performance increases, none of the new games offer significant improvements over the baseline. Furthermore, results of a longitudinal test three months after playing the games show that knowledge can be retained as participants still perform significantly better than before playing either one of the games.
{"title":"Exploring and Evaluating Different Game Mechanics for Anti-Phishing Learning Games","authors":"R. Roepke, Vincent Drury, Ulrike Meyer, U. Schroeder","doi":"10.17083/ijsg.v9i3.501","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17083/ijsg.v9i3.501","url":null,"abstract":"Anti-phishing learning games are a promising approach to teach end-users about phishing, as they offer a scalable and engaging environment for active learning. Existing games have been criticized for their limited game mechanics that do not allow for detailed assessment of the players' acquired knowledge, instead focusing mostly on factual and conceptual knowledge to remember or understand. To extend the research field, this paper presents the design and evaluation of two new anti-phishing learning games: The first game implements an extended classification mechanic to better assess the player's decision process, while the second game implements a different game mechanic, which requires players to combine URL parts to construct their own phishing URLs. We compare the games with each other and with a baseline implementation that uses binary decisions similar to existing games in a user study with 133 participants. The study shows, that while all three games lead to performance increases, none of the new games offer significant improvements over the baseline. Furthermore, results of a longitudinal test three months after playing the games show that knowledge can be retained as participants still perform significantly better than before playing either one of the games.","PeriodicalId":196187,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Serious Games","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131586286","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
K. Kubota, Elina Säteri, Tapani N. Joelsson, Tuomas Mäkilä, S. Salanterä, A. Pakarinen
A theory-based exergame was developed for tweens to promote their self-efficacy towards physical activity and increase their physical activity levels. We used protocols from both health science and gamification research in piloting the exergame. First, we assessed the usability and feasibility of the exergame and conducted a preliminary exploration of its effectiveness. After technical improvements were made based on our findings, we reiterated the pilot study and analysed the gamification elements of the exergame by using Octalysis analysis. The overall findings suggest that a theory-based exergame can positively influence the self-efficacy of tweens towards physical activity. The exergame showcased theoretical strength, achieved using diverse gamification elements but its overall game design and usability can be further improved. The study concludes that health-related components of the purpose of intervention must be incorporated in parallel with the engaging design of the game, taking into utmost consideration the theories, evidence as well as the needs and perceptions of its target users. This study provides valuable insights on future development and evaluation of gamified health interventions.
{"title":"Pilot Study and Gamification Analysis of a Theory-based Exergame","authors":"K. Kubota, Elina Säteri, Tapani N. Joelsson, Tuomas Mäkilä, S. Salanterä, A. Pakarinen","doi":"10.17083/ijsg.v9i3.506","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17083/ijsg.v9i3.506","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000A theory-based exergame was developed for tweens to promote their self-efficacy towards physical activity and increase their physical activity levels. We used protocols from both health science and gamification research in piloting the exergame. First, we assessed the usability and feasibility of the exergame and conducted a preliminary exploration of its effectiveness. After technical improvements were made based on our findings, we reiterated the pilot study and analysed the gamification elements of the exergame by using Octalysis analysis. The overall findings suggest that a theory-based exergame can positively influence the self-efficacy of tweens towards physical activity. The exergame showcased theoretical strength, achieved using diverse gamification elements but its overall game design and usability can be further improved. The study concludes that health-related components of the purpose of intervention must be incorporated in parallel with the engaging design of the game, taking into utmost consideration the theories, evidence as well as the needs and perceptions of its target users. This study provides valuable insights on future development and evaluation of gamified health interventions. \u0000","PeriodicalId":196187,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Serious Games","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116432470","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
P. V. R. Carvalho, Darcio Otaviano Ranauro, Antônio Carlos A. Mól, Alessandro Jatobá, Ana Paula Legey de Siqueira
Most Brazilian schools do not offer evacuation training from their buildings in the event of a fire. The lack of safety culture among students and teachers, coupled with a lack of knowledge and training on safety protocols to follow when facing fires, have led to unwanted outcomes, including unnecessary injuries and even death. This study describes the development of a prototype of a Serious Game to teach fire evacuation procedures in schools in the case of fire, aiming to help students to learn fire safety procedures, to know how to behave in case of fire, and to start discussions to create a positive fire safety culture. The prototype was used and evaluated by 35 public school students from 12 to 16 years old. The results indicated that students’ knowledge on how to behave in case of fire after they played the game was significantly improved, and the discussions triggered by the game contributed to the creation of a positive fire safety culture in school. The game developed proved useful to teach evacuation procedures and is available for use by all public schools in the city.
{"title":"Using Serious Game in Public Schools for Training Fire Evacuation Procedures","authors":"P. V. R. Carvalho, Darcio Otaviano Ranauro, Antônio Carlos A. Mól, Alessandro Jatobá, Ana Paula Legey de Siqueira","doi":"10.17083/ijsg.v9i3.484","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17083/ijsg.v9i3.484","url":null,"abstract":"Most Brazilian schools do not offer evacuation training from their buildings in the event of a fire. The lack of safety culture among students and teachers, coupled with a lack of knowledge and training on safety protocols to follow when facing fires, have led to unwanted outcomes, including unnecessary injuries and even death. This study describes the development of a prototype of a Serious Game to teach fire evacuation procedures in schools in the case of fire, aiming to help students to learn fire safety procedures, to know how to behave in case of fire, and to start discussions to create a positive fire safety culture. The prototype was used and evaluated by 35 public school students from 12 to 16 years old. The results indicated that students’ knowledge on how to behave in case of fire after they played the game was significantly improved, and the discussions triggered by the game contributed to the creation of a positive fire safety culture in school. The game developed proved useful to teach evacuation procedures and is available for use by all public schools in the city.","PeriodicalId":196187,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Serious Games","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126766522","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Supara Grudpan, Keattikorn Samarnggoon, Jakob A. H. Baalsrud Hauge, J. Hauge, R. Malaka
The development of cooperative serious games has specific challenges related to enabling players to achieve both gaming and learning goals in a cooperative fashion. The complexity of gameplay and learning objectives leads to the lack of guidance for the systematic development of cooperative serious games (SGs). To overcome the challenges, we propose a systematic approach to utilize elements of entertainment cooperative games to foster player engagement in SGs called “Transforming Game Premise” to overcome the difficulties. A three-phase guideline is proposed for transforming an existing cooperative entertainment game into a cooperative SG. To demonstrate the application of the proposed guideline, we developed a game prototype that follows the guided steps. We validate the guidelines by conducting two user studies. The first study aims at validating the game's effectiveness for learning purposes of a game developed according to our guidelines. The study showed that the developed game supports players in achieving the defined learning objectives. The second study is a qualitative study evaluating game developers' perception of the usability and usefulness of the Transforming Game Premise guideline. The latter study confirms that the proposed guideline is beneficial for systematically developing SGs. However, it also indicates that the guideline still needs more clarity in identifying the relation between game elements and players' interaction/cooperation.
{"title":"Towards Transforming Game Premise: Validating an approach for Developing Cooperative Serious Games: An approach for Developing Cooperative Serious Games","authors":"Supara Grudpan, Keattikorn Samarnggoon, Jakob A. H. Baalsrud Hauge, J. Hauge, R. Malaka","doi":"10.17083/ijsg.v9i3.502","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17083/ijsg.v9i3.502","url":null,"abstract":"The development of cooperative serious games has specific challenges related to enabling players to achieve both gaming and learning goals in a cooperative fashion. The complexity of gameplay and learning objectives leads to the lack of guidance for the systematic development of cooperative serious games (SGs). To overcome the challenges, we propose a systematic approach to utilize elements of entertainment cooperative games to foster player engagement in SGs called “Transforming Game Premise” to overcome the difficulties. A three-phase guideline is proposed for transforming an existing cooperative entertainment game into a cooperative SG. To demonstrate the application of the proposed guideline, we developed a game prototype that follows the guided steps. We validate the guidelines by conducting two user studies. The first study aims at validating the game's effectiveness for learning purposes of a game developed according to our guidelines. The study showed that the developed game supports players in achieving the defined learning objectives. The second study is a qualitative study evaluating game developers' perception of the usability and usefulness of the Transforming Game Premise guideline. The latter study confirms that the proposed guideline is beneficial for systematically developing SGs. However, it also indicates that the guideline still needs more clarity in identifying the relation between game elements and players' interaction/cooperation.","PeriodicalId":196187,"journal":{"name":"Int. J. Serious Games","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117162577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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