Moving Beyond Fun: Evaluating Serious Experience in Digital Games

Iacovides, Ioanna and Cox, Anna L. (2015). Moving Beyond Fun: Evaluating Serious Experience in Digital Games. In: CHI '15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, New York, USA, pp. 2245–2254.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702204

Abstract

Games are normally considered to be “fun”, though recently there is growing interest in how gameplay can promote empathy and encourage reflection through “serious experience”. However, when looking beyond enjoyment, it is not clear how to actually evaluate serious experience. We present an evaluation of four games that were submitted to a student game design competition; the competition challenged teams to design a game that inspired curiosity around human error and blame culture within the context of healthcare. The entries were judged by a panel of six experts and subjected to a round of play testing by twelve participants. Methods included gameplay observation, questionnaires, post-play interviews and follow-up email questions. We discuss the utility of these methods, with particular emphasis on how they enabled a consideration of the immediate and longer term impact of serious experience on players.

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About

• Item ORO ID
• 46981
• Item Type
• Conference or Workshop Item
• ISBN
• 1-4503-3145-9, 978-1-4503-3145-6
• Project Funding Details

• Funded Project Name	Project ID	Funding Body
  CHI+MED	EP/G059063/1	EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council)

• Keywords
• Games; evaluation; critical play; engagement; positive experience; negative experience; serious experience
• Academic Unit or School
• Institute of Educational Technology (IET)
• Copyright Holders
• © 2015 The Author(s)
• Depositing User
• Ioanna Iacovides