Challenges developing serious and education games

Most commercial games inherently have the ability to propel the user through extremely steep learning curves allowing them to go from the ‘get your feet wet’ stage to the ‘make crucial strategic decisions’ stage in unbelievably short periods of time in a manner that conceals from the player the fact that they are learning anything new.

This and other facets of Games (such as enabling of concealed and vicarious learning and user data mining etc.) as a medium are irresistible to the education & training markets. Thus “Serious games” or “games for learning” are fast becoming popular.

However to the surprise and somewhat dismay of the educational fraternity they discovered that players do not automatically start learning simply because game technology has been utilized in making the material.

The skill and experience of the developers and a deep understanding of game design with appropriate metaphors for the content are all crucial for making games that are effective at teaching and in fact even otherwise entertaining.

Even for experienced game developers finding the elusive virtues that give a game its engagement is a hard and often insurmountable challenge even for projects pursuing purely fantastic topics. In games for education this becomes even harder as simultaneously appropriate pedagogues and learning outcomes also have to be adhered to.