Principles of Serious Games

Honours isn't exactly busy at the moment- I'll be diving into a systematic review soon, but I can't start yet until my team has nutted out our search terms and so forth. For now I've been mainly floundering around reading articles while trying to figure out what to do with myself. One of the articles that my supervisor sent to me a while back was about principles of effective design of "serious games," or games that are played for a primary purpose other than simply entertainment. This will become relevant to me later, as my Honours project will be looking at virtual reality gaming and robotics in the treatment of cerebral palsy.

So what are the main principles of effective gaming, according to the paper that my supervisor sent me? They are:

• Storylines and characters- help to create a sense of immersion, which in turn leads to more positive outcomes.
• Short-, medium- and long-term goals.
• Continuous feedback and rewards- preferably of the type that targets intrinsic motivation. (Avoid too much negative feedback as this may serve to decrease motivation and learning potential. Rehabilitation games are meant to target things that patients aren't good at, so negative feedback might just add to the frustration.)
• Individualised difficulty levels. One way of doing this is by using adaptive progressions, in which the level of difficulty is adapted to the player's in-the-moment game performance. Usually the overall performance level is maintained between 75% and 85% for optimal results.
• Provision of choice- increases motivation and learning.

Addition of multiplayer elements was also suggested as another way to increase motivation as well as social skills (particularly pertinent given that this paper is about serious gaming in autism).

References

Whyte, EM, Smyth, JM & Scherf, KS 2015, ‘Designing serious game interventions for individuals with autism’, Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, vol. 45, no. 12, pp. 3820-3831.