Understanding Serious Gaming: A Psychological Perspective

Background

When the revenue of digital entertainment games passed the revenue in film production in the United States of America in 2004 and games became the fastest growing segment in the entertainment industry (ESA, 2004), advocates, teachers, and politicians alike were wondering how the interest in games could be channelled into educational domains. The enthusiasm in game play observed particularly in younger users could, so the assumption goes, be harvested for more serious purposes than merely entertainment. Academic education, language skills, health related knowledge or appropriate attitudes and behaviours may be better and more efficiently taught using game technology. Game-based learning seemed to be the ultimate pathway not only to counteract any detrimental effects of “non-serious” games, but also to reach out to populations on whom rather traditional educational efforts were lost, to facilitate the educational impact in general or to enhance it in providing, for example, opportunities for deeper learning. The U.S. military was one of the first agencies recognizing the inherent potential of games and invested significant funds for new developments, which have been tremendously successful (e.g., America’s Army). At the same time, education for children within and outside the curriculum was targeted by less economically powerful agencies such as schools, museums, or small companies devoted to enriching learning experiences for children and adolescents. Their attempts resulted in much less sophisticated games than developed by the US military that often did not fulfil the promise of an engaging learning experience (Shen, Wong, & Ritterfeld, 2009). So far, the development of games with serious purposes, such as educational or health enhancement has had some, limited, success.