Quality Criteria for Serious Games: Serious Part, Game Part, and Balance
Key: CHM+20
Author: Polona Caserman, Katrin Hoffmann, Philipp Müller, Marcel Schaub, Katharina Straßburg, Josef Wiemeyer, Regina Bruder, Stefan Göbel
Date: July 2020
Kind: @article
Keywords: Serious Games; Educational Games; Games for Health; Exergames; Quality Criteria
Abstract: Serious games are digital games that have an additional goal beyond entertainment. Recently, many studies have explored different quality criteria for serious games, including effectiveness and attractiveness. Unfortunately, the double mission of serious games, that is, simultaneous achievement of intended effects (serious part) and entertainment (game part), is not adequately considered in these studies. This paper aims to identify essential quality criteria for serious games. The fundamental goal of our research is to identify important factors of serious games and to adapt the existing principles and requirements from game-related literature to effective and attractive serious games. In addition to the review of the relevant literature, we also include workshop results. Furthermore, we analyzed and summarized 22 state-of-the-art serious games for education and health. The selected best-practice serious games either prove their effectiveness through scientific studies or by winning game awards. For the analysis of these games, we refer to “DIN SPEC 91380 Serious Games Metadata Format.” A summarized text states quality criteria for both the serious and the game part, and especially the balance between them. We provide guidelines for high-quality serious games drawn from literature analysis and in close cooperation with domain experts.
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