My brief foray into educational game design a few years back keeps me focused as least passively on what is going on in the game development sphere.
It looks like metaplace.com, which conceptually SHOULD have been successful, is shifting gears (going under). It is a shame, I think the 2.5D Flash environment has potential, but in a world of triple A shooters a cartoon big headed avatar Flash environment I think failed to capture content creators which spells death for metaplace's current model.
Oh well, sometimes you step up to the plate, swing, and strike out. I wish a prosperous future to the folks at metaplace, no harm in failing as long as they pick themselves up, brush off, learn, and move forward.
Showing posts with label Serious Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Serious Games. Show all posts
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Serious Gaming...Why People Don't Get It
In my past job I worked a little bit and thought a lot about Serious Gaming. Here is a quick rant for today about that. I think the the Holy Grail for Serious Games is not about learning reinforcement. As I told my former boss today.
"The game should be the textbook."
I think there are different markets for different serious games. Ultimately the more serious the game, the less free time your target audience tends to have. Tacking on a game or a simulation as an extra task isn't going to be well received and almost always doomed to failure. However, if a game or simulation is subtractive rather then additive, that is where user acceptance will go up. What do I mean?
Typically training involves learning a competency, and then practicing that competency. If you think about it, that is all games do. You learn a competency, say how to zap an alien, and then you exercise that competency continously.
So, often Serious Games focus on exercise and reinforcement of a competency. Unfortunately, no one really trust Serious Games enough to have them fully replace other traditional methods of competency learning and practice. So Serious Games, often at this point poorly implemented, give users a new task without reducing their over all training work load. This is bad.
What needs to happen is Serious Games need to become good enough so that they subtract from traditional training method work loads. In academia, Serious Games need to replace text books. In corporation, Serious Games need to replace conferences and training pamphlets.
Then Serious Gaming will have arrived.
"The game should be the textbook."
I think there are different markets for different serious games. Ultimately the more serious the game, the less free time your target audience tends to have. Tacking on a game or a simulation as an extra task isn't going to be well received and almost always doomed to failure. However, if a game or simulation is subtractive rather then additive, that is where user acceptance will go up. What do I mean?
Typically training involves learning a competency, and then practicing that competency. If you think about it, that is all games do. You learn a competency, say how to zap an alien, and then you exercise that competency continously.
So, often Serious Games focus on exercise and reinforcement of a competency. Unfortunately, no one really trust Serious Games enough to have them fully replace other traditional methods of competency learning and practice. So Serious Games, often at this point poorly implemented, give users a new task without reducing their over all training work load. This is bad.
What needs to happen is Serious Games need to become good enough so that they subtract from traditional training method work loads. In academia, Serious Games need to replace text books. In corporation, Serious Games need to replace conferences and training pamphlets.
Then Serious Gaming will have arrived.
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