PRIZE CATEGORY SERIOUS GAMES
The use of games for support human activities is not a new phenomenon. Games have been used to nurture cooperation skills, learn tactics and train strategic thinking formany decades. In the wake of development of commercial games these possibilities have emerged even more. A specific category of digital games where main purpose is not only to entertain is Serious Games. Even though the name Serious Game is somewhat misleading (aren’t all games serious?) and even though there has been many different labels for what Serious Games represents (such as edutainment) we have chosen to use the term for this prize category.
A Serious Game is a mix of an engaging game and a use purpose that is not associated with entertainment. There are many, perhaps infinite, different purposes games can be used. A dominant category of serious games is learning games, in which the purpose is to engage a user by gaming to learn something. All games learn something but these learning games have a certain agenda to what is being learnt. There are other categories, all with different purposes:
Training games – Games where you are to train a specific skill.
Information games – Games where a specific message is in focus. This is a very broad category and includes political games (games with a specific political agenda), advergames (advertising games).
Analytical Games – Games where you simulate something to analyse a problem or to perhaps foresee a potential solution. For instance play a traffic simulation game to analyse future problems.
Games for health – Games specifically designed to increase users’ health or health awareness. Could be physically as in exercise gaming or mentally as in treating various phobias.
As a note, these are all examples of categories, there are many other categories and perspectives of serious games found in books and presentations.
THEME OF THIS YEAR
New to this year Serious Game category is the introduction of a theme. This year we would like to see submissions addressing UNCERTAINTY. The reasons to introduce a theme are two-fold, first it is problem area that is of interest to the partner of the serious games category (Swedish National Defence College). It is also a way to inspire the developers to create novel ideas to the genre that can broaden the serious games field.
What is then uncertainty and does not all games already include uncertainty? Well yes, all games address and include uncertainty in some way. In chess the playing field is open and visible but there is uncertainty of the opponent’s strategy. In realtime strategy games there are many uncertainties, as where the opponents are located, the strategy and how the terrain looks like.
However, to have familiarization of uncertainty as purpose for playing the serious game is a different beast that can generate many different games. An example is when the game goals of the opponents (or the computer in single player games) are unknown. How would you play the game if you have only a vague idea what the opponent intentions are? Basing this to a game design could generate an interesting serious game, especially when the intended purpose of the game is to familiar players with uncertainty. Questions raised when playing the game would then support the discussions afterwards.
This is how National Defence College addresses learning with games when playing for purposes like military tactics. We would like to see submissions where uncertainty is addressed. Note that we open up for a broad spectrum of games. Uncertainty can be addressed in both abstract puzzle games and in real-world thematic games like warfare simulators. Use your imagination but document how uncertainty is captured in the game.
Questions on the theme can be directed to albin @ gameawards.se.
WHAT IS BEING JUDGED?
Reviewing a serious game follows the same challenge as designing a serious games. First of all we need to know what purpose the game is trying to fulfill. The next is how the game is addressing this problem through the game design. Following this is we evaluate how the game is executed to this design and finally we evaluate what the intended usage is of the game. To make this evaluation process possible we need a document as a complement to the game where you describe all these surrounding factors. Bear in mind that the same game can be used for different purposes so it is vital for us to know what exactly you are thinking of when supporting the intended purposes.
Even though we have theme for this year competition we do not disqualify submissions with a different serious game purpose. Use your own imagination; what kind of serious games would you like to see in the future? How would that look like? What purpose or need should your game nurture? Think broad and challenge yourselves to design an impressing serious game!
Resources
- Wikipedia – More about Serious Games and real game examples.
- Gamasutras – Gamsutras new section on Serious Games.
