Serious Gaming: Assumptions and Realities

Keynote by
Ute Ritterfeld
Professor for Media Psychology at VU University Amsterdam and co-founded the Center for Advanced Media Research Amsterdam (CAMeRA@VU)

URGH! First I couldn't save my draft of the previous post, then my battery started to go dead. Here is what I got of Dr. Ritterfeld's talk before my thirst for that warm flowing liquid of life overcame me. I'm charging now and things seem to be back to normal.

Serious Gaming: Assumptions and Realities

Hopefully the awkward term of “Serious Games” can be replace.

Serious Games is an oxymoron, but there assumptions:

• SG are the new pathway in education developed, chosen, and deliberately played by the gamer generation
• SG are effective in areas of education, health, social change, military, marketing…
• SG are superior to other learning strategies
• SG can reach out to otherwise hard to teach learners
• Games are fun→ implies Serious games are fun

What does empirical evidence say? Games can be effective. The last 3 are areas needing more research. (Covered in many of the papers presented at the conferences.

Created a database n=612. Most Serious games were focused on education. Reviewed various findings related to breakdowns of target audience, and level of play.

5 clusters of information that relate game enjoyment

1. Technical Capacity (interface, user control)
2. Game Design
3. Aesthetics, visuals, acoustics
4. Social Experience
5. Narrativity and character development.

And the rest is lost to me... hopefully I'll find some other notes and be able to link to them.

See you in the morning.