Serious Game - Overview

Overview

The term "serious game" has been used long before the introduction of computer and electronic devices into entertainment. Clark Abt discussed the idea and used the term in his 1970 book Serious Games, published by Viking Press. In that book, his references were primarily to the use of board and card games. But he gave a useful general definition which is still considered applicable in the computer age:

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. We are concerned with serious games in the sense that these games have an explicit and carefully thought-out educational purpose and are not intended to be played primarily for amusement.

It is not a new idea. Military officers have been using war games in order to train strategic skills for a long time. One early example of a serious game is a 19th century Prussian military training game called Kriegsspiel, the German name for wargame.

Mike Zyda provided an update and a logical approach to the term in his 2005 article in IEEE Computer entitled, "From Visual Simulation to Virtual Reality to Games". Zyda's definition begins with "game" and proceeds from there:

• Game: "a physical or mental contest, played according to specific rules, with the goal of amusing or rewarding the participant."
• Video Game: "a mental contest, played with a computer according to certain rules for amusement, recreation, or winning a stake."
• Serious Game: "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."

Long before the term "serious game" came into wide use with the Serious Games Initiative in 2002, games were being made for non-entertainment purposes. The continued failure of the edutainment space to prove profitable, plus the growing technical abilities of games to provide realistic settings, led to a re-examination of the concept of serious games in the late 1990s. During this time, a number of scholars began to examine the utility of games for other purposes, contributed to the growing interest in applying games to new purposes. Additionally, the ability of games to contribute to training expanded at the same time with the development of multi-player gaming. In 2002, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington D.C. launched a "Serious Games Initiative" to encourage the development of games that address policy and management issues. More focused sub-groups began to appear in 2004, including Games for Change which focuses on social issues and social change, and Games for Health which addresses health care applications.

Other authors, though, (as Jeffery R. Young) consider that Serious Games didn't obtain the success that was expected, and new theories, like "Smart Gaming" have appeared to replace it.

There is no single definition of serious games, though they are generally held to be games used for training, advertising, simulation, or education. Alternate definitions include the application of games concepts, technologies and ideas to non-entertainment applications. This can also include specific hardware for video games, such as exergaming.

Serious games are aimed for a large variety of audiences, including primary or secondary education, professionals and consumers. Serious games can be of any genre, use any game technology, and be developed for any platform. Some may consider them a kind of edutainment; however, the mainstay of the community are resistant to this term.

A serious game is not a simulation alone. It may be a simulation combined with elements of game-play, specifically a chance to win. All have the look and feel of a game, a chance to win, but correspond to non-game events or processes from the real world, including business operations and military operations (even though many popular entertainment games depicted business and military operations). The games are made to provide an engaging, self-reinforcing context in which to motivate, educate and train the players. Other purposes for such games include marketing and advertisement. The largest users (unsubstantiated by business intelligence) of serious games appear to be the US government and medical professionals. Other commercial sectors are actively pursuing development of these types of tools as well.