Jeenny Stanley, MD at Appetite Creative, looks at the role and value of serious games.
Games that are intended to offer more than just entertainment are called serious games. They are used to promote learning and behaviour change. Serious gaming is used in various fields, such as education, healthcare, marketing and other businesses and industries. The strength of serious games is that they are entertaining, engaging and immersive. Serious games combine learning strategies, knowledge and structures with game elements to teach specific skills, information and attitudes. They include challenges and rewards for solving different problems. Here, the entertainment and engagement components help to connect with users on a deeper level as they play.
These games are used in many different areas as they can be applied to many problems and challenges. Serious games are an effective tool for the following reasons:
But how do they work?
Here are four elements that you can find in most games:
Serious games examples
The Microsoft Flight Simulator (1982) is one of the first existing serious games. This flight simulation was designed for civil aviation.
Another example is the game Pulse!! which reproduces the conditions of an emergency ward in a hospital. Nurses can practice all they learnt in their theoretical classes and gain experience handling real situations. The aim of the gamers is to identify the problem of each patient, giving priority to the most serious cases and taking the appropriate measures depending on the person's condition.
There is an educational edition of Minecraft, because Minecraft itself has such a wide range of mechanisms and dynamics to offer. Since Minecraft is a sandbox game which is made for the users to create anything they can imagine and offer them as many tools as they need, it has had all sorts of applications to build future-ready skills such as creativity, problem-solving or systems thinking.
If you want to read more about games that are more than just entertainment, here is an interesting article about P2E games that you can download for free.
Would you like to create a serious game to engage with your customers or the improve the relationship of your employees? Contact us today and ask for our game development team.