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Serious games : foundations, concepts and practice
Dörner R., Göbel S., Effelsberg W., Wiemeyer J., Springer International Publishing, New York, NY, 2016. 421 pp. Type: Book (978-3-319406-11-4)
Date Reviewed: Jun 15 2017

The book Serious games is a collection of overview chapters intended as a comprehensive introduction for a diverse set of stakeholders. Given the wide spectrum of stakeholder backgrounds, the editors chose to have themes elaborated at a level accessible to a general audience and to augment the material with exploratory questions, suggested readings, and a copious list of references at the end of each chapter. Even though it involves many authors, the book is well structured and the topical flow is continuous within each chapter and across chapters. The structure of the chapters follows the same template, thus enhancing the consistency and the cohesion of the main theme, whose essence is to describe the development processes and methods involved in the life cycle of a serious game. The editors suggest this compendium as a textbook that would provide enough technical expertise to be able to put the concepts into practice, that is, develop serious games. However, the overall presentation is highly abstract, making such an expectation difficult to achieve. The book espouses this attitude and offers little critical assessment of the complexity of serious game development and these games’ expected effects on learners.

The book consists of 12 chapters. Chapter 1 delimits the context of games by defining the notion of entertainment and serious games, elaborating the prevalent terminology, motivating the current importance of games, and summarizing the major themes of the book.

Serious game development requires a multidisciplinary approach to accommodate the field expertise of various members of the development team. Chapter 2 identifies computer science, art and design, psychology, didactics and pedagogy, and stories and storytelling as the major disciplines constituting this interdisciplinary team. Having identified the protagonists and their required backgrounds is a preliminary step; making them cooperate harmoniously and effectively is an issue that is left unstated.

Assuming the development team is ready to carry out its tasks, chapter 3 sets out to describe the processes to create a serious game. It is stated that serious game design follows the same process as entertaining games, with the additional task of requiring the integration of learning and learning content. The elaboration of this model and its implementation follows the typical software engineering stages, from conception to deployment. However, there is an added stage, which is the seamless composition of serious content and gaming. Except for recognizing the critical nature of this stage, the discussion does not describe any method.

Following design, chapter 4 discusses the software system implementation stage, which requires a development environment that addresses the heterogeneity of the development team and specialized authoring tools. Chapter 6, on games engines, focuses more on graphics and its various functions, such as rendering, lighting, shading, material, and animation, than on game engines, of which three are briefly mentioned. Chapter 7 addresses the issues of personalization and adaptation of games. Personalization is defined as a form of static adaptation, while adaptation is defined as a dynamic continuous adjustment of the game based on the behavior and performance of its users.

Chapter 8 introduces the many forms and dimensions of multiplayer games. It also discusses collaborative learning and the social ramifications of multiplayer serious games. Chapter 9 introduces player experience modeling and approaches to measure player experience. Assessing player experience is performed using psychological, physiological, and behavioral methods.

Chapter 10 defines the notions of performance and performance assessment in serious games. Given that a goal has to be achieved, performance then consists of the way to achieve the goal (process) and the results (outcomes). Both process and result must be assessed. Models based on natural sciences and on psychology are used to carry out various types of performance assessment.

Chapter 11 briefly discusses economic and legal issues. Collecting data on players raises ethical and privacy concerns.

The final chapter describes a long list of serious games covering various domains. Each game description follows a template that includes information about the authors, the title, the target audience, the domain, a short description, availability, and quality. A deeper analysis, even of much smaller samples of games, relating these games to concepts introduced earlier would have established the connection between the foundations and the practice. Interested readers may want to consult other titles [1,2,3,4].

Reviewer:  B. Belkhouche Review #: CR145355 (1708-0534)
1) Adams, E. Fundamentals of game design (3rd ed.). New Riders, Berkeley, CA, 2014.
2) Mayer, R. E. Computer games for learning: an evidence-based approach. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014.
3) Salen, K.; Zimmerman, E. Rules of play: game design fundamentals. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004.
4) Schell, J. T. The art of game design: a book of lenses. CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 2014.
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