A Framework for a Location-Specific Self-Adaptive Serious Game for Watershed Management

Serious Game

In our surroundings we have aspects with which we are not familiar to, most of the times. At times this unfamiliarity becomes an issue to cope up with the aspects and their upcoming results. Location based or geo based serious games can help in addressing such issues by providing a measure to explore new places with the serious gaming as a medium to it. This will make the players aware of what to do next. For an instance, we can look on an example by a game point of view, hide and seek. Imagine you are visiting an acquaintance’s home and playing this game there. You start thinking about where to hide as soon as the countdown begins, hide under a bed, behind a sofa or a curtain. Can you just notice the fact that under a situation of this game play you are thinking of to hide behind a curtain but in normal situation would you do so? No, right, so this is just all in the influence of the game that you are eager to do so and your way of interacting with the surroundings around you changed. It is not strange to do so in context to the game. This is a way of the game to combine the rules, storyline and mechanics to just encourage the player to get involved in the game with keen potential to win it. Relating to this hide and seek game it provides imaginative skills to reach a new place or to just escape from one to another without getting caught. This forms a framework for the game and similarly, such frameworks can be applied to the games to make it include both the fun as well as an informative source for the player. This fun plus information element in a game forms the bases of a serious game. Serious games with several different motives can be designed which may provide an exposure to a place or a situation, giving a virtual first-hand experience which would not be possible otherwise. This first-hand experience to the players about the tasks being performed in the game can be of real help to them. Serious games need a key ingredient and an initial point to start with to enhance the participation of the players. Serious games for environmental management can enhances the understanding regarding the environmental issues by providing the opportunity to have first -hand experiences which otherwise in reality will be of much cost, difficult to re-correct it or even dangerous at times. Serious games-based learning increases the soft skills like thinking ability for critical situations, problem solving approach, creative solutions, better cognitive development, etc., these all skills are essential in efficient environment management. The serious games are getting in trend and are being progressively used for the governance of natural resources and environment. These games are getting in use for data collection, teaching and training the stakeholders.