Beyond rules of play : rethinking play in serious game design assessment frameworks

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that video games can provide an engaging, motivating, and fun experience, but their capacity to constitute learning experiences is less known and their learning experiences are usually an accidental side effect. The digital gaming community has branched over to games that aim to leverage the power of play to support specific activities, such as therapeutic, educational, or organizational training activities; called serious games. After reviewing underpinning theories, key literatures, and challenges and issues involved in the process of serious game design; it is quickly recognized that there are necessary conditions that should be present and active for play to occur, be sustained, and have a positive impact. To guide the possibilities offered by serious games, experts have developed theoretical frameworks, which balance theories from human development and game design, to underpin effective serious game design and development by structuring their formal components and the relationship between the components. These frameworks help draw out useful interpretations and limitations of a serious game's design. Suspiciously, however, research that gives support to the impact of serious games has received less attention. Through a closer look at play in these frameworks, it is uncovered that they focus on in-game components and serious game requirements, but lack a player-centric approach to play. To enhance the analysis of how a serious game connects its purpose with in-game components or how it combines entertainment and learning objectives, a conceptual framework called the Player-Centric Approach to Serious Game Design Assessment (PCASGDA) is synthesized. The PCASGDA model supports a systematic and detailed representation of serious games, depicting the ways that game elements are connected to each other throughout this type of game and how these elements contribute to the realization of the serious game's purpose. Five case studies (Re-mission, SPARX, Elude, Sym and The Everyday Adventures of Samantha Browne) appraise the PCASGDA model's ability to argue a serious game's impact through a more exhaustive decomposition of its formal components.