ABSTRACT
With the prominent, if not preeminent, role of digital gaming in contemporary entertainment fi rmly established (e.g., Vorderer, Bryant, Pieper, & Weber, 2006), game developers and social scientists have begun to examine the potential of video and digital games to transcend entertainment and teach lessons as well as to model and motivate positive social change. As Gudmundsen (2006) claimed, “there’s a movement afoot that’s quietly trying to do something more substantial.… Known as the Serious Games Movement, this genre is about taking the resources of the (video) games industry and applying them outside of entertainment” (p. 1). A small sample of recent news headlines reveals that media gatekeepers have found such efforts newsworthy:
Saving the World, One Video Game at a Time (Thompson, 2006)
Three Winners Announced in Competition to Discover Innovative Video and Computer Games that Improve Health and Health Care (“Three Winners,” 2007)
Virtual-Reality Video Game to Help Burn Patients Play Their Way to Pain Relief (“Virtual-reality,” 2008)
Video Games Stimulate Learning (BBC, 2002)
LA Kids Learning Via Video Games (“LA Kids,” 2008)
The serious games movement’s birth is often traced to the U.S. Army’s release of the digital game America’s Army as a free online download in 2002, and its rapid expansion typically is linked to a series of focused conferences held jointly by scholars and industry practitioners between 2003 and 2007 (Gudmundsen, 2006). The movement has espoused numerous methodologies and principles, among them:
Action learning, learning by doing.… Instead of remembering facts or processes, students perform real tasks, employing both the knowledge and
the method as they do it. It is the difference between reading the manual and building the machine. It is experience over information. (“Software: Serious Games,” 2007, p. 1)
An article in The New York Times (Thompson, 2006) offered some important reasons for the rapid expansion of serious games:
The proposition may strike some as dubious, but the “serious games” movement has some serious brain power behind it. It is a partnership between advocates and nonprofi t groups that are searching for new ways to reach young people, and tech-savvy academics keen to explore video games’ educational potential. (p. 1)
Not everyone has been so positive about the efforts or potential of serious games. Peters (2007) noted, “Ever since video games were invented, parents and teachers have been trying to make them boring.… Making games educational is like dumping Velveeta on broccoli” (p. 1). Peters continued:
All of these ideas are premised on the notion that video games can and should be more than mindless fun. But all of this noodling about games’ untapped potential raises some philosophical questions: When does a game stop being a game and turn into an assignment? Can a game still be called a game if it isn’t any fun? (p. 1)
Value judgments aside, scholarship in media psychology offers some valuable lessons about how to utilize communicological and psychological principles to undergird and inform the design of serious games. Moreover, recent research in entertainment theory, consumer behavior, and user engagement and education (e.g., Bryant & Anderson, 1983; Bryant & Vorderer, 2006; Vorderer & Bryant, 2006) can be invaluable in better enabling game designers to inform and motivate targeted consumers.
