Towards a Constructionist Serious Game Engine

Despite the growing popularity and widespread use of serious games, the development of effective serious games is difficult, requiring an appropriate balance between game design and instructional design. Although there are fundamental differences between games developed purely for entertainment compared to those developed for “serious” purposes, there are currently no standard development tools specifically intended for serious game design and development available that encourage developers to follow a set of best practices. Rather, developers of serious games often rely on existing game engines and frameworks that are specific to entertainment-based game development. Given the availability of a large number of game engines and frameworks, deciding on which one to use to develop a serious game may be difficult, yet the choice of engine or framework can play a significant role in the development process. In this paper we present the results of a literature review that examined the frameworks and game engines that are used to develop serious games. We provide a list of the most commonly used frameworks and game engines and summarize their features. Knowledge of the frameworks and game engines that are most popular and details regarding why they are popular may prove to be useful to serious games developers seeking such tools. The chapter ends with a brief discussion regarding a framework that is currently being developed specifically for the development of serious games. Through consultation with the potential users of the framework (serious games developers), the framework aims to strike a balance between ease of use and functionality, while providing the user with the necessary options and tools to ideally develop effective serious games.

Given the sparsity of standard game engines and frameworks for serious game development, developers of serious games typically rely on entertainment-based game development tools. However, given the large number of game engines and frameworks dedicated to entertainment game development, deciding on which tool to employ may be difficult. A literature review that examined the frameworks and game engines used to develop serious games was recently conducted. Here, a list of the most commonly identified frameworks and game engines and a summary of their features is provided. The results presented provide insight to those seeking tools to develop serious games.

Nowadays the development of serious games for rehabilitation therapy is gaining popularity thanks to the motivational advantages of this type of computer software. Consequently, the need for a process framework for the development of this category of software applications has become more evident. The final goal is to guarantee that these software products are developed and validated following a systematic and coherent approach that supports the development of reliable serious games. In this work we introduce a design proposal for a methodological framework for the development of serious games for motor rehabilitation therapy.

Serious educational games are specially designed computer games which are used in an educational setting, in other words, they are interactive competitive lessons with defined learning outcomes which allow students to have fun during learning. The importance of serious games in contemporary educational practice is increasing. Applying serious games in teaching, students facilitate the learning process, adopt new skills and abilities, show more interest in learning, are more focused and more active in a class, and better understand and apply lessons learned. The complexity of serious games requires large efforts for their development. For the development of serious games teachers mostly use commercial game engines. One of the important parts of game development is a selection of appropriate development tool. Due to the range of available tools the choice of platforms for serious games is a challenge, whose selection often has considerably different goals and technical requirements depending on context and usage. The aim of this paper is to propose criteria which should be considered before selecting a game engine for serious games and shows results of a comparison of evaluated most popular game engines. Some recommendations for teachers about choosing the most suitable game engines for serious games development are also presented.

Scholars have extensively studied video game labor practices (e.g., Bulut, E. (2015). Glamor above, precarity below: Immaterial labor in the video game industry. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 32(3), 193-207. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2015.1047880 , Bulut, E. (2020). White masculinity, creative desires, and production ideology in video game development. Games and Culture, 16, 1555412020939873; Banks, J. (2013). Co-creating videogames. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing; Kerr, A. (2010). The culture of gamework. In M. Deuze (Ed), Managing Media Work (pp. 225-236). London: Sage; O’Donnell (2009). The everyday lives of video game developers: Experimentally understanding underlying systems/structures. Transformative Works and Cultures, 2. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2009.0073 , O’Donnell (2014). Developer’s dilemma: The secret world of videogame creators. Cambridge, MA: MIT press; Johnson, R. S. (2013). Toward greater production diversity. Games and Culture, 8(136), 136-160. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412013481848 , Johnson, R. (2014). Hiding in plain sight: Reproducing masculine culture at a video game studio. Communication, Culture & Critique, 7, 578-594. https://doi.org/10.1111/cccr.12023 ); yet, few have exclusively examined the process of character design (e.g., Srauy, S. (2017). Professional norms and race in the North American video game industry. Games and Culture, 14, 478-497. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412017708936 ). Using a grounded theory analysis of 19 interviews with games designers and developers, this work complements existing research with insights on how gender and gendered interactions, technologies, audiences, market logics, and corporate culture integrate and influence character design practices. We found that technological affordances (e.g., game engines and related software; see Whitson, J. R. (2018). Voodoo software and boundary objects in game development: How developers collaborate and conflict with game engines and art tools. New Media & Society, 20, 2315-2332) converged with the masculine, heteronormative identities of game developers to shape normalized valued practices for character design, resulting in formulaic tropes that generally appealed to a masculine audience. Changes in status quo character design were attributed to diversity-conscious individuals, who operated within organizational practices privileging proven formulas over innovative designs.

Objective: To describe the development and evaluation of a nurse-patient interactive serious game in improving nurses' self-efficacy and performances in teaching the correct inhaler technique. Materials and Methods: The technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge (TPACK) framework was applied to guide the development of the serious game. The learning effectiveness of the serious game was evaluated through a randomized controlled trial that involved 46 registered nurses. Participants in the experimental group were asked to teach the inhaler technique to a standardized patient using the serious game as a teaching tool, whereas participants in the control group were asked to provide their own usual teaching to a standardized patient without the serious game. The performances of both groups were assessed based on their feedback to a standardized patient who made several errors while demonstrating the inhaler technique. Self-efficacy levels of teaching the inhaler technique were examined before and after the intervention. Results: A significantly higher number of participants from the experimental group obtained perfect performance scores than those in the control group (65.21% vs. 21.74%, χ2 = 15.18, P < 0.01). The posttest self-efficacy mean scores for the experimental group improved significantly (P < 0.001) after the intervention, and significantly higher (P < 0.05) compared to the posttest mean scores of the control group. Conclusion: The study provided evidence on the effectiveness of a serious game in improving the self-efficacy and immediate postintervention performances of nurses teaching the inhaler technique. This game provides a practical and accessible learning tool to help nurses ensure effective patient education.

This paper introduces the SHARE-IT project, which leverages serious games paradigm to motivate and engage children with autism diagnosis in interactive activities, based on the state-of-the-art autism intervention practices. The aim of SHARE-IT is to formulate, in partnership with schools, parents and industry, the requirements for a robust, intelligent and authorable environment for supporting children in exploring, practicing and acquiring social interaction skills. SHARE-IT focuses on two key challenges: (i) developing robust system architecture and implementation, able to support both continuing development of a serious game for children with autism and its real world use; and (ii) selecting appropriate technologies and techniques to allow for (a) multi-device and operating system deployment, (b) the development of an intelligent serious game for supporting social interaction while (c) allowing the flexibility for the environment to be authored by lay persons. SHARE-IT’s architecture is presented and several considerations of importance to enabling the engineering of an intelligent and authorable serious game are discussed. Examples of technologies developed to date are given throughout and a discussion of future challenges offered.

The recent re-emergence of serious games as a branch of video games and as a promising frontier of education has introduced the concept of games designed for a serious purpose other than pure entertainment. To date the major applications of serious games include education and training, engineering, medicine and healthcare, military applications, city planning, production, crisis response, to name just a few. If utilised alongside, or combined with conventional training and educational approaches, serious games could provide a more powerful means of knowledge transfer in almost every application domain. Serious Games and Edutainment Applications offers an insightful introduction to the development and applications of games technologies in educational settings. It includes cutting-edge academic research and industry updates that will inform readers of current and future advances in the area. The book is suitable for both researchers and educators who are interested in using games for educational purposes, as well as game professionals requiring a thorough understanding of issues involved in the application of video games technology into educational settings. It is also applicable to programmers, game artists, and management contemplating or involved in the development of serious games for educational or training purposes.

Alzheimer's disease and other related disorders (ADRD) represent a major challenge for health care systems within the aging population. It is therefore important to develop better instruments to assess the disease severity and progression, as well as to improve its treatment, stimulation, and rehabilitation. This is the underlying idea for the development of Serious Games (SG). These are digital applications specially adapted for purposes other than entertaining; such as rehabilitation, training and education. Recently, there has been an increase of interest in the use of SG targeting patients with ADRD. However, this field is completely uncharted, and the clinical, ethical, economic and research impact of the employment of SG in these target populations has never been systematically addressed. The aim of this paper is to systematically analyze the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) of employing SG with patients with ADRD in order to provide practical recommendations for the development and use of SG in these populations. These analyses and recommendations were gathered, commented on and validated during a 2-round workshop in the context of the 2013 Clinical Trial of Alzheimer's Disease (CTAD) conference, and endorsed by stakeholders in the field. The results revealed that SG may offer very useful tools for professionals involved in the care of patients suffering from ADRD. However, more interdisciplinary work should be done in order to create SG specifically targeting these populations. Furthermore, in order to acquire more academic and professional credibility and acceptance, it will be necessary to invest more in research targeting efficacy and feasibility. Finally, the emerging ethical challenges should be considered a priority.

The research is relevant as educational computer games are included in students’ mathematical activity and form additional opportunities to improve the quality of teaching mathematics in a digital school, to support the formation of the demanded professional competence - computational thinking. To form the appropriate skills that determine the essence of special computational thinking, the authors propose to include game educational spaces based on digital gamification resources into students’ mathematical activities. The research aims to resolve the contradiction between requirements of the modern economy for specialists’ high level of computational thinking and an insufficiently developed methodological base for training graduates that meets these requirements. The purpose of this research is to study the features of using gamification technologies in teaching mathematics to form the skills and abilities that make up the essence of computational thinking. The article describes directions of educational and cognitive mathematical activity based on the principles of gamification. The authors clarify the concept of “computational thinking”, which includes a system of actions for activating patterns, connections between them from human memory, and compile an effective algorithm for solving them: to obtain relevant information on advanced technological developments; to state the problem and model; to use a software product with mathematical content.

Coding or computer programming for children is now increasingly popular. According to various studies, children who learn coding at a very young age will benefit from learning to critically assess situations, explore different perspectives, build creative solutions, and even develop cognitive abilities. But of course the difficulty of the learning process itself is another level, and again, we need to see the fact that children nowadays are more into video games than learning makes this kind of situation become more complex. Therefore, this research was carried out which aims to design and create an Android-based coding introduction educational game called Funcode. Game development is assisted by the Construct 2 game engine and using the waterfall method from the SDLC or System Development Life Cycle. The game is in the form of a module equipped with a quiz by introducing HTML and CSS programming languages, as well as applying a little Computational Thinking material. Based on the blackbox test results, this mobile game called Funcode is successfully runs without any errors on various types of smartphones that have been tested

Beginning Android C++ Game Development introduces general and Android game developers like you to Android's powerful Native Development Kit (NDK). The Android NDK platform allows you to build the most sophisticated, complex and best performing game apps that leverage C++. In short, you learn to build professional looking and performing game apps like the book's case study, Droid Runner. In this book, you'll learn all the major aspects of game design and programming using the Android NDK and be ready to submit your first professional video game app to Google Play and Amazon Appstore for today's Android smartphones and tablet users to download and play. The techniques contained in this book include building a game engine, writing a renderer, and building a full game app with entities, game levels and collisions. As part of the tutorial you'll also learn about inserting perspectives using cameras and including audio in your game app.

ABSTRACTThe aim of this article is to advance a framework for understanding and teaching game design in higher education, in order to address complexities inherent in teaching game design courses. Everyday teaching and learning game design often deviate from the standard textbook model of game design. In reality everyday teaching and learning operate with handling game design curriculum, how to think games, and how to organise the development process. The presented framework merge curriculum, thinking, and process guided by the game design concept of juiciness. The framework will be presented by dismantling the standard textbook model of game design into three; game design (curriculum), game design thinking (thinking), and game development (organisation). In this perspective game design is concerned with game mechanics, game design thinking preoccupied with paper prototyping, metaphor, and framing, while game developments addresses player experience including play and game testing. This article will coin vertical design as juiciness as opposed to horizontal design understood as expanding system layout. Juiciness will be placed as a guiding principle in the relationship between designers and designed content as an aspect of designer intentions and motivations. Lastly, the content centric framework will be presented by merging game design, game design thinking, game development, vertical design with selected aspects of accepted software development strategies as an approach to teaching and learning game design in higher education.

Gamification is the use of game design elements to enhance the teaching-learning process and turn a regular, non-game activity into a fun, engaging game. Simultaneously, serious games are proposed as an efficient and enjoyable way of conducting cognitive assessment, as they combine a serious intention with game rules and targets. In this scenario, game engines have emerged as information technologies for serious games and educational games development; however, this development has usually been performed without a guide to identifying game attributes to be present in the game. To address this gap, we present an analysis of the most used game engines to identify game and learning attributes supported for serious and educational games development. Findings from this analysis provide a guide of the most popular game engines that offer the largest support for game attributes, which were also classified by game categories.

Often, designers and developers of serious games (and virtual simulations in general) strive for high fidelity (realism). However, real-time high-fidelity rendering of complex environments across sensory modalities such as vision, audition, and haptic (sense of touch) is still beyond our computational reach. Previous work has demonstrated that multimodal effects can be considerable, to the extent that a large amount of detail of one sense may be ignored or enhanced by the presence of other sensory inputs. Taking advantage of such multimodal effects, perceptual-based rendering—whereby the rendering parameters are adjusted based on the perceptual system—can be employed to limit computational processing. Motivated by the general lack of emphasis given to the understanding of audio rendering in virtual environments and games, we have started investigating multimodal (audiovisual) interactions within such virtual environments. Our work has shown that sound can directly affect visual fidelity perception and task performance within a virtual environment. These effects can be very individualized, whereby the influence of sound is dependent on various individual factors including musical listening preferences, suggesting the importance of individualizing the virtual environment to each user. This chapter begins with an overview of virtual environments and serious gaming’s open problems, with an emphasis on fidelity, and multimodal interactions, and the implications that these may have on performance and computational requirements. A detailed summary of our own prior work will be provided along with insight and suggestions that may guide designers and developers of serious games and virtual learning environments in general. Although the chapter is contextualized in the use of serious games in health professions education, the information provided is generalizable across a variety of domains.