Serious games are being described by some analysts as the next wave of technology-mediated learning. In the market report released by IDATE, one of Europe’s foremost market analysis and consulting firm for Telecom, Internet and Media industries, in July 2010, estimates that serious game sector currently generates 1.5 billion EUR in revenue around the globe, and that by 2015 sales will be almost seven times what they are in 2010 – with an average annual growth rate of 47% between 2010 and 2015. Plus, we can expect to see the business world’s interest in serious games increase around 2013, and especially small and medium enterprises (SME) whose awareness of these tools is still rather limited.
As organizations intensify their efforts to engage with members of today’s workforce, serious games offer a powerful, effective approach to learning and skills development. 21st century learning experiences need to reflect the lives of 21st century workers. While there is still skepticism that something called a game could be anything more than a leisure activity, serious organizations are getting serious results with serious games.
Casual games
While computer games have been around for as long as there have been personal computers, the popularity of these immersive experiences is due entirely to the convergence of virtual worlds, games, social networking, and rich Internet applications (RIAs).
Casual games are purely for entertainment. They may include everything from the solitaire game that is preloaded on every personal computer to downloadable games to hugely complex multiplayer games like Counter-Strike and Halo, and everything in between. Casual games are available in many platform formats: PC, game console, and mobile. While learning can and does occur within a casual game, it is a by-product, rather than an intentional outcome of game play.
Serious games: where game design meets learning
Serious games are designed with the intention of improving some specific aspect of learning, and players come to serious games with that expectation. Serious games are used in emergency services training, in military training, in corporate education, in health care, and in many other sectors of society. They can also be found at every level of education, at all kinds of schools and universities around the world. Game genre, complexity, and platforms are as varied as those found in casual games. Play, an important contributor to human development, maturation, and learning, is a mandatory ingredient of serious games. What sets serious games apart from the rest is the focus on specific and intentional learning outcomes to achieve serious, measurable, sustained changes in performance and behavior.
Who uses serious games?
Military and emergency services organizations were very early adopters of serious games for training. The value of serious games to this sector is readily apparent. The critical and hazardous nature of the work for which soldiers are trained requires a “virtually real” environment where mistakes are not catastrophic. The highly coordinated and cooperative nature of their work requires a learning environment that builds teams and prepares personnel for highly specific and highly coordinated missions.
For many of the same reasons as military organizations, higher education institutions use serious games in a variety of settings for example to, Give psychology students a way to understand various states of mental illness, Teach hedge fund management, Accelerate time for science experiments or Teach Arabic language, culture, and customs.
Younger learners are also being exposed to serious games with great success. In order to stimulate motivation and engagement of individual students and class groups, serious games create a virtual learning environment that is Learner-centric, Highly individualized and Aimed at encouraging exploration of a large body of content.
But serious games are not meant to replace existing forms of information, communication or training, but rather to flesh them out and enhance them with interactivity, GUI and a video game’s ability to plunge the user into an environment where he or she will be more receptive to the message being transmitted. Plus the social aspect of a serious game, which fits naturally with a multi-user or even a massively multiplayer approach, will be the prime areas of focus in the coming years, for both the “player” of the game and the professional using it as a tool.
While the market for serious games remains in its infancy, there are some encouraging signs that suggest that its potential for growth may be realized within the near future.
