Serious Games:
From Serious Fun to
Serious Impact
Dr. Michael Katchabaw
Department of Computer Science
The University of Western Ontario
E-mail: katchab@csd.uwo.ca
Outline
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What are Serious Games?
Serious Games in the Classroom
Developing Serious Games
Resources for Development
Programming
 Content and Assets
 Websites
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Concluding Remarks
2
What are Serious Games?
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The premise is to apply game design,
technologies, and skills to nonentertainment applications. This includes:
Medical and scientific applications.
 Educational applications.
 Social and public policy applications.
 Business and management applications.
 Military applications.
 Plus many other types of simulations and
applications.
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3
What are Serious Games?
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In the end, serious games are essentially
participatory simulations capable of
meeting a variety of objectives.
They can educate and inform, investigate
issues, provide commentary, disseminate
messages, spread awareness, and so on.
 They are interactive, requiring involvement
and commitment from the player, who plays
a direct role in affecting the outcome and
experience delivered.
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4
What are Serious Games?
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The study of serious games is a rapidly
growing and evolving field.
The serious games industry has similar
research and development needs as the
entertainment games industry.
It is in an earlier stage of development,
but is attracting considerable attention.
 There is a real need for professionals capable
of designing and building serious games and
appropriate supporting technologies.
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5
What are Serious Games?
Screenshots from example serious games from the Serious Games Summit
6
Serious Games in the
Classroom
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Serious games have the potential to
provide interesting and challenging
classroom projects to computer science
classes.
These projects can both engage and
educate students, while tackling realworld problems in unique and innovative
ways.
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Serious Games in the
Classroom

Studying the development of serious
games gives students a chance to:
Study challenging computing problems.
 Investigate issues and problems not available
elsewhere in existing curriculum.
 Do so in interesting and engaging fashion.
 Express their creativity and ingenuity.
 Work in interdisciplinary and team settings.
 Make an impact in something of interest and
concern both to themselves and others.
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Serious Games in the
Classroom
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Our own experiences with serious games
at Western have been quite positive.
We have run several workshops for
elementary and secondary students on
serious games design.
 Several serious games have been created in
projects in our game development courses.
 Senior students are currently developing an
environmentally-themed serious game as
their capstone project, for entry into the
Xbox 360 Games for Change Challenge.
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9
Serious Games in the
Classroom
Screen shot from The
Misadventures of State-Man.
This action-adventure game
was developed at Western
in early 2005. Its
environmental mechanics
are now being used as a
basis for a new
environmentally-themed
game under developed
at Western for entry into
the Xbox 360 Games for
Change Challenge.
10
Developing Serious Games
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Serious games are still games and so they
share many of the same development
considerations as entertainment games.
Typically, development will require a large
amount of programming effort.
 Programming effort can be reduced, however,
through the use of engines and middleware.
 Either way, content and assets will need to
be linked to this programming for ultimate
presentation in the game.
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11
Developing Serious Games
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In the end, though, since the goal is no
longer entertainment, there are some
differences as well to be aware of.
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These differences are most apparent during
concept development and design.
Keep this in mind:
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“Don’t try and peel the icing off the video
game cake and lay it over the liver of learning
and expect it to taste the same.”
- David Thomas, of Buzzcut.com
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Concept Development
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Getting started in the process can be
more difficult than one might think.
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Students might have a lot of experience with
games as entertainment, but they have not
likely had much exposure to serious games.
Consequently, assistance might be
necessary in getting the process started,
and formulating the initial concept
behind the game.
13
Concept Development
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It might help to have students study
serious games in general first.
Wikipedia has many interesting articles.
 seriousgames.org and gamesforchange.org
are community sites with lots of information.
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Having students play existing serious
games might provide some ideas.
Design workshops and brainstorming
sessions in groups might help too.
14
Concept Development
Screen shot from Food Force. Produced by the United Nation’s World Food
Programme, this game examines humanitarian relief efforts. With millions of
players from dozens of countries, this game has had quite an impact.
More information and downloads at: http://www.food-force.com.
15
Concept Development
Screen shot from Darfur is Dying. This game, developed by mtvU, was
inspired in part by the success of Food Force. The game provides
a window into the experience of refugees in the Darfur region of Sudan.
More information and the game at: http://www.darfurisdying.com.
16
Concept Development
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Ultimately, formulating the initial concept
can be just a few questions away.
Ask students what is important to:
Themselves?
 Friends and family?
 Their school?
 Their community?
 Their country?
 Humanity as a whole?
 The world?
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17
Designing Serious Games
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From this initial concept, the students
will need to figure out what their serious
game is all about.
This starts with a basic description of
the various elements of the game and
several iterations of filling in details.
Once enough information has been
provided, the game is ready to be
produced.
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Designing Serious Games
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Required information includes:
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Target sector of the game. (Medical, scientific,
public policy, corporate, military …)
Objectives. (What is the player expected to take
away from the game when done?)
Gameplay. (What does the player do in the game?)
Story. (Plot, setting, characters, if any …)
Structure. (How does the game progress?)
Puzzles and obstacles. (What gets in the player’s
way of their goals in playing the game?)
Interface. (How does the player play the game?)
A title might be good too!
19
Designing Serious Games:
Knowing the Subject Matter
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In designing a serious game, it is of
critical importance to know the subject
matter very well.
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You must know this at the start of the
project and build the game around it, and
not the other way around!
Otherwise, how do you create the right
experience and meet your objectives?
Doing a bad job here, in some cases,
might be worse than doing nothing at all.
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Designing Serious Games:
Knowing the Audience
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A good designer always has an idea of
what is going on in a player’s head.
Know what they want and do not want.
 Know what they expect and do not expect.
 Know what they are capable of and what
they are not capable of.
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A designer out of touch with the audience
has a much harder time of ensuring the
game’s objectives are met.
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Designing Serious Games:
Knowing the Audience
On left, Captain Planet and the Planeteers. On the right, Captain Planet
from a segment on Robot Chicken. It doesn’t take much to figure out
which version might appeal better to today’s youth. That doesn’t make
it better at conveying the message necessarily though …
22
Designing Serious Games:
Consistency and Harmony
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It is important to find a way to make every
aspect of a serious game fit together into a
coherent, integrated whole.
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Consistency is important to this; out of place,
illogical, nonsensical, or seemingly random
elements disrupt harmony.
Everything in a game must work in unison to support
the theme and objectives of the game.
Without harmony, it can be quite difficult to
achieve the objectives of the game and have
the users take away the right things.
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Designing Serious Games:
Engaging the Player
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Ideally, you want to engage the player
emotionally and immerse them in the
experience created within the game.
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Through story, characters, gameplay, and
social interactions with other players, put
them into the game and have them live it.
Doing so enables a much richer and
deeper experience than otherwise
possible, and achieving objectives can
become easier, depending on the game.
24
Designing Serious Games:
Engaging the Player
Screen shot from Darfur is Dying. In this part of this persuasive game,
you must get water back into your refugee camp without coming into contact
with militia. Otherwise, as you learn in the game, you can be beaten,
raped, sold into slavery, or killed. With the player engaged emotionally
in this fashion, the game’s message is very effectively conveyed.
25
Designing Serious Games:
Reality Trumps Fun?
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In entertainment games, if there is a
choice between fun and reality, fun
should nearly always win.
In serious games, more often than not it
works the other way, and realism should
win out over fun.
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Precise, real-world effects might be of
overwhelming importance, particularly in
military, health, and emergency response
applications where lives are at stake.
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Designing Serious Games:
Reality Trumps Fun?
Screen shot from Hazmat: Hotzone. In a serious game like this, you want
reality over fun, or else you could have dire consequences in the real world.
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Designing Serious Games:
Reality Trumps Fun?
Screen shot from The Anatomy of Care. This game presents and simulates
several patient care scenarios from a hospital … you want this realistic!
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Designing Serious Games:
Reality Trumps Fun?
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The extent to which reality trumps fun
depends on the target audience and
theme of the game.
Games aimed at children or adolescents,
for example, may require simplifications or
abstractions that sacrifice realism.
 If the audience is turned off of the game
before its objectives have been met, and
do not complete the experience, this is
ultimately a problem.
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Designing Serious Games:
Reality Trumps Fun?
Screen shot from Food Force. Since this game is targeted towards a younger
audience and is more of a social/public policy game than an educational
simulation, some realism and depth is sacrificed to preserve the message.
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Designing Serious Games:
Assumptions to Avoid
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The latest and greatest hardware is
available to players of the game.
This might be true for entertainment games
dominated by the hard core, but can be a
bad assumption for serious games.
 Some serious games will require the latest
and greatest in hardware, but it is bad to
assume it will be available for all serious
games.
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Designing Serious Games:
Assumptions to Avoid
Screen shot from The Anatomy of Care. This game is based on simple web
technologies, making it playable on both high and low-end hardware.
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Designing Serious Games:
Assumptions to Avoid
Screen shot from Darfur is Dying. This game is Flash-based, allowing
it to be played in web browsers with minimal hardware requirements.
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Designing Serious Games:
Assumptions to Avoid
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Players have prior gameplay experience.
Again, true in entertainment, but in serious
applications a lot of users will have little or
no gameplay experience.
 Interfaces and other assumptions must be
re-examined to ensure that games remain
accessible to the target audience.
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Designing Serious Games:
Assumptions to Avoid
Screen shot from Hazmat: Hotzone. The interface is kept simple
to assist non gamers in playing the game.
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Designing Serious Games:
Assumptions to Avoid
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Bigger is better.
In entertainment games, players play for fun,
and so providing as much fun as possible is a
good thing.
 In a serious game, the intent must be kept
in mind and addressed without going too
overboard in the process.
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Stay focused on the objectives of the game.
 Avoid complicating the experience.
 Attempting to capture too much in a simulation
will lead to schedule misses and cost overruns.
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Designing Serious Games:
Assumptions to Avoid
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Provide short-cuts to fun.
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In entertainment games, shortcuts are a
good thing to get players into fun quicker:
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Includes the use of randomness, time
compression, process simplification, headache
removal, and perfect communication.
All of these short-cuts, however, introduce
deviations from reality, with potentially
harmful consequences depending on the
nature of the serious game and its overall
objectives.
37
Designing Serious Games:
Assumptions to Avoid
Screen shot from Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps. Military strategy games like
this one have to employ several short-cuts to keep the game flowing nicely.
Such short-cuts in a real military simulation could be bad though.
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Designing Serious Games:
Assumptions to Avoid
Screen shot from Food Force. Since this game is targeted towards a younger
audience and is more of a social/public policy game than an educational
simulation, some short-cuts are still acceptable or even necessary.
39
Designing Serious Games:
Other Considerations
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Testing and progression tracking tends to
be important to serious games.
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Are the game players getting what they
should be getting out of the game?
Does the serious game integrate well
within the environment in which it is
going to be used?
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They should assist existing processes (for
education, training, and so on), and not
replace them.
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Designing Serious Games:
Other Considerations
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How do you get players to play
serious games?
Ideally, players should want to play without
being compelled to play by their teachers,
parents, employers, and so on.
 Want to focus on intrinsic motivations, not
just extrinsic motivations!
 Usually, this requires relating the experience
to the player and their world, and show how
this can positively affect their lives.
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41
Resources for Development
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Once a serious game has been designed,
it is time to go into production.
Instead of having to go it alone and do
everything on your own, there are a lot of
resources to help out on the subject.
Here are but a few …
42
Resources for Development:
Programming
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There is a wide variety of development
tools, engines, and middleware of
potential use in student projects.
There are a lot of choices available
depending on various factors:
Programming vs. scripting vs. tools alone
 Choice of programming language
 2D vs. 3D game
 Freeware vs. shareware vs. $$$
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Resources for Development:
Programming
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There are far too many options to list.
Fortunately, there are many places with
lists that allow an easy selection based on
course and student needs:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines
http://www.devmaster.net/engines
http://gpwiki.org/index.php/Game_Engines
http://www.ambrosine.com/resource.html
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~katchab/pubs/ecoo2006.ppt
(my ECOO 2006 talk on game development)
44
Resources for Development:
Content and Assets
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Game content and assets are necessary
to complete a game and create the
overall player experience.
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This includes artwork, sound effects, music,
voiceovers, and so on.
If development is largely occurring in a
computer science classroom, you do not
want to distract students by having them
develop their own content and assets.
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Resources for Development:
Content and Assets
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So, where can they come from?
Visual arts, music, drama, and other courses
within the school can be a good option.
 Local content producers and/or game
companies that are willing to help out.
 And, of course, the Internet:
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http://www.ambrosine.com/resource.html
 http://reinerstileset.4players.de/englisch.htm
 http://freesound.iua.upf.edu
 My ECOO 2006 talk had other links too!
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46
Resources for Development:
Websites
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Industry-oriented
Entertainment Software Association
(http://www.theesa.com)
 ESRB (http://www.esrb.org)
 IGDA (http://www.igda.org)
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Game development news
GameDev.net (http://www.gamedev.net)
 Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com)
 Slashdot (http://games.slashdot.org)
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And do not forget google and wikipedia!
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Concluding Remarks
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Serious games provide a new and exciting
way to provide engaging experiences in
an immersive and interactive fashion for a
variety of purposes.
There are many potential application
areas, and work is only in its infancy.
Consequently, serious games represent
interesting new opportunities for the
computer science classroom!
48