What are Serious Games?

In addition to my course in Advanced Game Design, I’m currently also reading a course about Serious Games. This post will explain what a Serious Game is and some examples of their usage

Serious Games

The best way to describe a Serious Game is as a game whose main purpose is not entertainment. Ben Sawyer states that “Serious games are solutions to problems. Any meaningful use of computerized games or game industry resources whose chief function is not entertainment are serious games.” (1).  However, there are several different kinds of games who are not mainly made for entertainment.

In an earlier lecture we had in the course, Ernest Adams brought these as possible problems that Serious Games solves

• Governmental issues
• Healing people
• Improving people’s life
• Informing people
• Persuading people
• Running Business
• Teaching people

Some examples of uses of Serious Games

Here are some examples of what Serious Games can be used for in practice.

The first example is a rather cleaver one; a game that describes how tourists should walk to see as much as possible of a tourist area. Now why does this fall under the category of Serious Game, shouldn’t they have another primary purpose than entertainment? That is correct, and it is also correct in this example. As Ernest Adams mentioned in a lecture, this could be used to lead tourists along a route where they walk past stores so that they can buy things there. So this example is very much a serious game, the main purpose of it is to lead tourist into the stores so they can earn more profit.

Another example of a serious game can be games that want to inform people of something. For example, you can make games about why smoking is bad for you or informing people about what happens to civilians during an armed conflict.

Are Serious Games simulations?

So by this, it may sound as Serious Games are simulations. It is true that they can be simulations, but they aren’t required to be. As Ernest Adams said to us, we are looking for fun in our game and we abstract or remove features that aren’t fun. For example, in war games we don’t have to refuel our vehicles because if we had to, the game would not be very fun.

End Notes

(1) http://www.hsgrc.org/About/WhatareSeriousGames/tabid/1473/Default.aspx