A Model-driven Framework for Educational Game Design

Educational games are a class of serious games whose main purpose is to teach some subject to their players. Despite the many existing design frameworks, these games are too often created in an ad-hoc manner, and typically without the use of a game design document (GDD). We argue that a reason for this phenomenon is that current ways to structure, create and update GDDs do not increase the value of the artifact in the design and development process. As a solution, we propose a model-driven, web-based knowledge management environment that supports game designers in the creation of a GDD that accounts for and relates educational and entertainment game elements. The foundation of our approach is our devised conceptual model for educational games, which also defines the structure of the design environment. We present promising results from an evaluation of our environment with eight experts in serious games

Usability Evaluations of a Water Quality Awareness Game

Citizens are not aware of water quality issues and their impact on the environment. It was this finding that motivated a project that aimed to design a game to educate users on water quality issues. Design Science Research (DSR) methodology was adopted for the development of the water quality awareness game, which focuses on ocean plastic pollution. This paper reports the usability of the game and the increase in knowledge and awareness of ocean plastic pollution of users. The main findings revealed that whilst initial knowledge of ocean plastic pollution was low among the participants, their knowledge increased after playing the game. The participants found the game to be “enjoyable”, “informative” and “eye-opening”, but that they would have preferred more variability in difficulty levels. This study provides valuable lessons learnt and demonstrates that gamification can be used to educate citizens of water quality

Estado del arte sobre el modelado conceptual de juegos serios mediante un mapeo sistemático de la literatura

Serious games are those games whose objective is to stimulate learning or the acquisition of knowledge or a skill. Currently, there is a trend in the market towards the generation of this type of games. Given the importance of conceptualizing the domain of a problem and its solution, this paper presents the results of a systematic mapping of the literature, Systematic Mapping Study (SMS), with the purpose of identifying the state of the art and discovering the existing contributions regarding the conceptual modeling of serious games. A search was carried out in Scopus, IEEE Xplore and ACM digital libraries from January 2010 to June 2021. Of a total of 558 articles identified, 31 primary studies were analyzed. It was evidenced that the use of UML prevails for the modeling of serious games, mainly for class and activity diagrams, together with other languages such as UP4EG, DSML, Deterministic Finite Automaton (DFA), Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) and Fuzzy Inference Systems (FIS). Thirty percent of the primary studies propose a framework and another 30% propose a development methodology. Most of these frameworks do not specify how to perform conceptual modeling.Los juegos serios son aquellos juegos cuyo objetivo es estimular el aprendizaje o la adquisición de un conocimiento o una habilidad. Actualmente, existe una tendencia en el mercado hacia la generación de este tipo de juegos. Dada la importancia de conceptualizar el dominio de un problema y su solución, este trabajo presenta los resultados de un mapeo sistemático de la literatura, Systematic Mapping Study (SMS), con el propósito de identificar el estado del arte y descubrir los aportes existentes sobre el modelado conceptual de los juegos serios. Se realizó una búsqueda en bibliotecas digitales Scopus, IEEE Xplore y ACM desde enero de 2010 hasta junio de 2021. De un total de 558 artículos identificados, se analizaron 31 estudios primarios. Se evidenció que prevalece el uso de UML para el modelado de juegos serios, principalmente para diagramas de clases y actividades, junto con otros lenguajes como UP4EG, DSML, Deterministic Finite Automaton (DFA), Discrete Event System Specification (DEVS) y Fuzzy Inference Systems (FIS).Facultad de Informátic

a reliability game for source factors and situational awareness experimentation

Systems to support Situational Awareness take increasingly advantage of data and information fusion techniques. Due to the rise in the variety of information sources (e.g., sensors, open-source, intelligence, historical databases) and their possible lack of veracity those techniques should account for source reliability. Although the appropriate mathematical instruments exist, it still needs to be fully understood what are the factors that contribute to source reliability and what is their relative and total impact on Situation Assessment, which is the process that builds up Situational Awareness. In order to characterise source factors impact on human belief assessment the Reliability Game has been developed. This is a data exchange game in which the players are requested to perform Situational Assessment tasks by mentally processing incoming information and meta-information, abstracted and provided through cards. This paper presents the method, the design choices and shows through a qualitative analysis that the proposed approach is indeed able to capture elements of source factors impact on players' belief changes. Data collected through the game will be further analysed to inform and improve the design of information correction methods in multi-source information fusion systems

Therapeutic serious game design guidelines for stimulating cognitive abilities of children with speech and language delay

The creation of an effective therapeutic serious game (TSG) is highly dependent upon its design and the fundamental knowledge of the users. Furthermore, the TSG is designed for a purpose to the users by incorporating the needs of the users in all design components.Although numerous studies have been conducted on guidelines for designing serious games, to date, studies on the specific TSG’s design guidelines for stimulating the cognitive ability of children with speech and language delay (CSLD) has yet to be comprehensively studied.Therefore, this study focuses on the set of design guidelines for the development of TSG for CSLD, specifically on cognitive stimulation.The TSG design guidelines in this paper are derived through the study of relevant literature, and best practices gained from interviews with experts in the area of speech pathology.These guidelines would be useful for researchers and game designers to design TSG for CSLD focusing on cognitive stimulation

Experience, Experiment, Evaluate: A Framework for Assessing Experiential Games

The design of effective educational games has proven itself difficult for many years, leading to sparse and somewhat inconsistent insight into the principles governing such systems. While attempts at constructing frameworks for educational games certainly exist, their nature is often quite general (limiting the practical utility) or noticeably specific (limiting the scope of projects to which that framework might be applied). We present a design framework for a broad, but well-defined genre known as experiential games. We have named our framework the Experience, Experiment, Evaluate (EEE) framework and believe it to be an adequate lens under which to analyze such games. This article presents the EEE framework in detail and provides example analyses of three games (a U.S. Civil War history game, a medical diagnosis game, and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time). We present empirical results for two of these games showcasing evidence that presumed adherence to EEE provides benefits in the classroom. In particular, the medical diagnosis game, Rashi, is shown to elicit higher quantity and quality of student responses when features were added that more tightly bound the game to our framework. Additionally, we provide evidence that activities within our U.S. Civil War game, ‘A Nation Divided’, are more successful in providing learning gains to students when those activities more carefully apply the ideas within our framework. We do not present any empirical results regarding Ocarina of Time, but include it as an anecdotal example of how commercial games have applied these principles successfully in order to teach the mechanics of the game to players, and argue that this is, in many ways, an exercise in pedagogy. We end by offering suggestions for strategically incorporating elements of our framework in the development and design of future systems

PYP – Play Your Process: Um Método de Design de Jogos Digitais Baseados em Processos de Negócio

Jogos digitais são frequentemente usados em diversas áreas como ferramentas capa-zes de ensinar algo. Em se tratando especificamente da gestão de processos de negó-cio, existem algumas propostas de uso de jogos digitais para treinamento de pessoal e simulações das etapas de um processo de negócio. Pensando na capacidade de os jogos darem suporte ao ensino e aprendizagem, esta pesquisa argumenta sobre a oportunidade de usar modelos de processo de negócio para o design de jogos digitais. Assim, este relatório técnico visa apresentar e organizar, em detalhes, o método Play Your Process (PYP), o qual é um método de design de jogos digitais baseado em mo-delos de processos de negócio. Este método foi pensando para ser uma ferramenta útil para pessoas que queiram construir jogos digitais para a compreensão de proces-sos, no qual o jogo deva transmitir conhecimentos sobre ele

Knowledge Acquisition Analytical Games: games for cognitive systems design

Knowledge discovery from data and knowledge acquisition from experts are steps of paramount importance when designing cognitive systems. The literature discusses extensively on the issues related to current knowledge acquisition techniques. In this doctoral work we explore the use of gaming approaches as a knowledge acquisition tools, capitalising on aspects such as engagement, ease of use and ability to access tacit knowledge. More specifically, we explore the use of analytical games for this purpose. Analytical game for decision making is not a new class of games, but rather a set of platform independent simulation games, designed not for entertainment, whose main purpose is research on decision-making, either in its complete dynamic cycle or a portion of it (i.e. Situational Awareness). Moreover, the work focuses on the use of analytical games as knowledge acquisition tools. To this end, the Knowledge Acquisition Analytical Game (K2AG) method is introduced. K2AG is an innovative game framework for supporting the knowledge acquisition task. The framework introduced in this doctoral work was born as a generalisation of the Reliability Game, which on turn was inspired by the Risk Game. More specifically, K2AGs aim at collecting information and knowledge to be used in the design of cognitive systems and their algorithms. The two main aspects that characterise those games are the use of knowledge cards to render information and meta-information to the players and the use of an innovative data gathering method that takes advantage of geometrical features of simple shapes (e.g. a triangle) to easily collect players\u2019 beliefs. These beliefs can be mapped to subjective probabilities or masses (in evidence theory framework) and used for algorithm design purposes. However, K2AGs might use also different means of conveying information to the players and to collect data. Part of the work has been devoted to a detailed articulation of the design cycle of K2AGs. More specifically, van der Zee\u2019s simulation gaming design framework has been extended in order to account for the fact that the design cycle steps should be modified to include the different kinds of models that characterise the design of simulation games and simulations in general, namely a conceptual model (platform independent), a design model (platform independent) and one or more implementation models (platform dependent). In addition, the processes that lead from one model to the other have been mapped to design phases of analytical wargaming. Aspects of game validation and player experience evaluation have been addressed in this work. Therefore, based on the literature a set of validation criteria for K2AG has been proposed and a player experience questionnaire for K2AGs has been developed. This questionnaire extends work proposed in the literature, but a validation has not been possible at the time of writing. Finally, two instantiations of the K2AG framework, namely the Reliability Game and the MARISA Game, have been designed and analysed in details to validate the approach and show its potentialities