This document discusses serious games, defined as digital games used for purposes beyond entertainment, primarily in educational settings. It explores the effectiveness of serious games in various domains such as medicine, military, and corporate training while noting trends like gamification and the integration of games with curriculum. Despite their potential benefits, the adoption of serious games in mainstream education remains low, with issues related to cost, deployment, and formal evaluation processes.

1. Serious Games: current uses and
emerging trends
Invited talk at ICWL 2015, Guangzhou, China
Baltasar Fernandez-Manjon
balta@fdi.ucm.es , @BaltaFM
e-UCM Research Group , www.e-ucm.es
South China University of Technology, 06/011/2015

2. What
A couple of informal definitions
2

3. Serious Games
• Any use of digital games with purposes other than
entertainment (Michael & Chen, 2006)
• The use of digital games for educational purposes
• Other terms frequently used:
– Educational games,
– Applied games,
– Game-like Simulations,
– Games with Purpose,
– Simulations
– Edutaiment
3

4. Gamification
• Gamification is the application of game-design elements and game
principles in non-game contexts to obtain some kind of improvement
(to increase user engagement)
• Games and gamification are two sides of the same approach.
Educational games immerse the student in the game, where content
and curricula are delivered or juxtaposed. Gamification aims to
incorporate elements of games, such as levels and badges (but also
via quests and other strategies) into non-game activities.
(The NMC Horizon Project: 2013 Higher Education Edition)
• Many times the distinction between serious games and gamification
is blurring
– e.g. learning languages with Duolingo
(www.duolingo.com)
4

5. Why
But first let me tell you a story ….
5

6. Question:
Which instrument reduce the rate of
deaths and complications in surgery by
more than one third ?
N Engl J Med 2009; 360:491-499

7. 7
http://www.who.int/patientsafety/safesurgery/en/index.html

8. 8

9. 9
When implementation leaders did not explain why or show how
the checklist should be used, staff neither understood the
rationale behind implementation nor were they adequately
prepared to use the checklist, leading to frustration, disinterest,
and eventual abandonment despite a hospital-wide mandate
Conley, et at (2011). Effective surgical safety checklist implementation. Journal of the American
College of Surgeons, 212(5), 873–9

10. A Model of Learning Objectives
10

11. Games for learning
• Games are a natural way of learning
– Humans learn very complex behaviour playing (e.g.
social skills)
• Characteristics of games
– Backstory or Story line
– Rules and game mechanics
– Graphical enviroment
– Interactivity and reactivity
– Challenge /competition
11

12. Key game elements for
engagement
1. Interactivity: Players’ opportunity to initiate actions and
receive evaluative information about their actions.
2. Feedback: The often immediate information players
receive about the efficacy of their game actions.
3. Agency or control: The player’s ability to manage
aspects of gameplay such as the use of control
mechanisms and influencing story line.
4. Identity: The player’s opportunity to become a game
character via an avatar and/or to form relationships and
linkages with game characters.
5. Immersion: A player’s sense of presence, transportation,
or integration within the game.
12

13. Flow in games
Chen J. Flow in games (and everything else).
Communications of the ACM. 2007;50(4):31.

14. Games characteristics
• Basically, a game is an abstract world where some goals
should be obtained following some rules
• Engagement elements
– Conflict and challenge
– Fantasy and curiosity
– Perception of the advance
– Progressive difficulty
– Feedback

15. Games for learning
• Games provide an adequate environment for acquiring
or applying knowlege
– Fail safe
• Authentic Learning
• Deliverate practice (Ander Ericsson)
– Clear learning objective
– Adequate and increasing level of difficulty
– Repetitive practice with informative feedback
15

16. How to make a game?
16 http://www.slideshare.net/dings/would-the-real-mary-poppins-please-
stand-up-49259549/35-and_snap_the_jobs_a

17. Games as educational tools
• Videogames can be instrumental in acquiring abilities and
skills like
– Spatial perception and recognition
– Development of visual discernment and separation of
visual attention
– Development of inductive logic
– Cognitive development in scientific/technical aspects
– Development of complex skills
– Spatial representation
– Inductive discovery
– Iconic code construction
– Gender construction
17
Aguilera M de, Mendiz A. Video games and education. Computers in Entertainment. 2003;1(1):10

18. Benefits of playing videogames
18
Granic, I., Lobel, A., & Engels, R. C. M. E. (2014). The benefits of playing video games. The American
Psychologist, 69(1), 66–78. doi:10.1037/a0034857

19. Who
19

20. Who play videogames?
• One of the most popular entertainment activities
• One of the largest entertainment industries
– Bigger than movies
• USA
– 55% of the population plays videogames
– 42% of them play for at least three hours per week
– average player age of 35 years
• Over 70% of children and teenagers in the EU, and over
90% in the USA, play videogames
20
2015 Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry. Entertainment Software Association (ESA).
ISFE. (2014). GameTrack Digest : Quarter 3 2014. Retrieved from
http://www.isfe.eu/sites/isfe.eu/files/attachments/gametrack_european_digest_q3-14.pdf

21. Serious games at school (USA)
Takeuchi, L. M., & Vaala, S. (2014). Level up learning: A national survey on teaching with digital games. New York: The Joan
Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop
• 62% teachers have used games to simulate and
supplement learning.
• (Harris Poll, 2014 –Pearson-, 1000 teachers K12, USA)

22. What
22

23. Serious Games use?
• Serious Games have probed to be educationally
effective in several domains
– Medicine, military, business, corporate training
• But still is a low adoption of Serious Games in
mainstream education
• Serious Games considered usually as a complementary
content
– Mainly used for motivational purposes
– No actual impact on the final mark
23

24. Military: America’s Army
24 http://www.americasarmy.com/

25. ReMission
25
Intended for young
people with cancer and
oral chemotherapy
•effective tool that supports
treatment adherence
•sense of power and control
over their disease

26. Games for school: TreeFrog
26
More educational games at http://centerforgamescience.org
http://play.centerforgamescience.org/treefrog/

27. Serious Games Repositories
27
http://www.gamesforchange.org/
http://gameswithpurpose.org/

28. Issues &
Fixes?
28

29. Issues at school for SG use

30. How teacher selects SG
30

31. Game Cost per minute of play
$300
$8K
$3K
$25K
eAdventure games
Science
Pirates
Immune
Attack
AAA games
http://immuneattack.org
http://sciencepirates.com/

32. e-Adventure Platform
32
Open code authoring environment for the production of point-and-click
adventure games & immersive learning simulations
Oriented to educators
No programming
required
http://sourceforge.net/projects/e-adventure
www.mockap.es

33. Scalability and maintainability
• Reducing initial cost (production or licensing) and the
Total Cost of Ownership
• Once that the game became an educational asset it
should be available independently of technological
changes
– e.g. Science Pirates now is being re-doit for the new
operating systems
• Should be possible to make changes into the game
– To fix identified issues
– To improve or update content …
33

34. Deployment
• Complex to deploy games at the school
• Games are very dependent of the platform
• Requires extra work for the teachers
• Situaltion improving with new tecnologies (e.g.HTML5)
and multiplatform authoring tools (e.g. Unity3D)
34

35. Methodologies to simplify SG
creation
35 Torrente et at (2014) Development of Game-Like Simulations for Procedural Knowledge in Heathcare Education.
IEEE Transactions on Learning Tecnologies. 7(1), 69-82
In the medical domain

36. http://www.chermug.eu
First visit to OR, with UCMhttp://first-aid-game.e-ucm.es
http://trasplant-game.e-ucm.es/

37. Uses of Learning Analytics in
educational games
• Game testing – game analytics
– It is the game realiable?
– How many students finish the game?
– Average time to complete the game?
• Game evaluation
– From pre-post test to learning analytics evaluation
• Game deployment in the class
– Real-time information for supporting the teacher
– “Stealth” student evaluation
– Knowing what is happening when the game is
deployed in the class

38. RAGE: creating the Learning Analytics
infrastructure
Using interaction data for assessment
• Evaluating the game
• Discovering user problems

39. Formal evaluation pre-post
• Off-line learning analytics
• Formal evaluation of
games is very complex
and expensive
– Pre-test
– Post-test
• Very few games have
been formally probed to
be effective
• Similar results with
Learning Analytics than
with pre-post test? 39

40. Why …
But first let me finish to tell you the previous
story ….
40

41. We created the Checklist Game
– Raise awareness about the checklist
– Learn how to apply it properly and consequences of
not applying it
– Let practice it application in a free-risk environment
In cooperation with UCM (Surgical Department),
Hospital Doce de Octubre, LCS-MGH
http://sourceforge.net/projects/e-adventure/files/games/checklist/

42. Checklist game
• Formative evaluation at UCM and MGH/Harvard
• Final evaluation at 5 hospitals in Madrid (Clinico, 12 de
Octubre, Santa Cristina, Puerta de Hierro)
• Good results (in press)

43. Trends
Some trends in the field of serious games
43

44. Casual players, mobility, BYOD
• More players on mobile devices (up to 30%)
– smartphones and tablets
• Some schools are being equipped with tablets
• BYOD approach with games
• Simplify deployment
44

45. Gaming for good
• gaming approaches applied to solving complex problems
in a collaborative way
45
Play to Cure™: Genes in Space - a mobile game in which players collaborate to analyse real genetic data
(Cancer Research UK, n.d.)
http://centerforgamescience.org/portfolio/foldit/
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/
support-us/play-to-cure-genes-in-
space

46. More integration of SG with
curriculum and better info for
teacher
46
https://labyrinth.thinkport.org/www/

47. SG and Brain Controller Interfaces
Ahn, M., Lee, M., Choi, J., & Jun, S. (2014). A Review of Brain-Computer Interface Games and an Opinion Survey from
Researchers, Developers and Users. Sensors, 14(8), 14601–14633. doi:10.3390/s140814601

48. Geolocated games
• Plenty application in different domains such as teaching
history and exergames
48
https://www.ingress.com/

49. SG and MOOCs:
The case of EyeWire and edX
49
SG as MOOCs exercises
In-browser WebGL client,
EyeWire servers with API
that is queried from edX
Manuel Freire, Ángel del Blanco, Baltasar Fernández-Manjón (2014): Serious Games as edX MOOC Activities. Proceedings of
the 2014 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) Page 867-871

50. Educational versions of commercial
games
Miller, J., Vázquez-cano, E., & Obligatoria, S. (2015). Exploring Application, Attitudes and Integration of Video Games: MinecraftEdu
in Middle School. Educational Technology & Society, 18(3), 114–128.

51. Publishing companies producing
games
'Big Three' Publishers Rethink K-12 Strategies - http://www.edweek.org/dd/articles/2013/02/06/02textbooks.h06.html

52. Are virtual worlds dead?
SecondWorld and others
Virtual World Framework
• A fast, light-weight, web-based architecture for creating
and distributing, scalable, collaborative, and component-
based virtual spaces
• Design Goals
– HTML5 and Web-based standards
– Open source
– JavaScript for simulation logic
– Replicated computation
• They could be used as simulations, courseware,
interactive training, or games.
52
http://www.adlnet.gov/tla/vw-sandbox.html

53. 53
Thank you!
•¿Questions?
• Mail: balta@fdi.ucm.es
• Twitter: @BaltaFM
• GScholar: https://scholar.google.es/citations?user=eNJxjcwAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
• ResearchGate: www.researchgate.net/profile/Baltasar_Fernandez-Manjon
• Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/BaltasarFernandezManjon

54. Our current projects
BEACONIG
H2020 ICT2015
Project 687676