Serious Game Design and Development

Course page: https://iversity.org/en/my/courses/serious-game-design-and-development/lesson_units By Carlos Vaz de Carvalho

• Play: engagement in activity for enjoyment. Voluntary.
• Game: competitive activity, with a framework of agreed rules.
• Serious game: not designed with entertainment as main purpose, rather to learn something.

• Play is necessary condition of the generation of culture (Johan Huizinga).

• Digital games add to game definition:
  • Immediate interactivity
  • Manipulation of large information
  • Automated complex systems
  • Networked communication.

• Creative process of going from the idea to the actual game.
• Keep the player in the “flow channel”
• Game elements:
  • Technology
  • Aesthetics
  • Mechanics
  • Story
• Game mechanics types:
  • Space
  • Objects
  • Actions
  • Rules
  • Skill
  • Chance
• Type of games:

* Action games: quick reflexes.

  * Adventure games.
  * RPG games
  * Simulation games
  * Strategy games
  * Puzzle games

• awareness games: Darfur is dying