Högskolan i Skövde

In serious game development, graphic design needs to be eye-catching, while also depicting subject matter content in a responsible, accurate, and clear way. Previous research has shown that abstract and symbolic game visuals seem to be preferable for learning and providing an engaging experience. Our research focuses on describing the challenges involved in creating effective visual communication through game graphics in cross cultures. In particular, we’re interested in examining if certain styles of visual communication are more or less effective between different cultural demographics. To examine this, we have created a serious game which aims to promote healthy food and nutrition habits to teenagers in both Nepalese and Swedish schools and by doing so also motivate behavioral changes toward healthier eating habits. We are currently conducting studies to see whether preferences and image recognition differ between the two demographical spheres. This paper will only discuss the exploratory study done in Nepal. Ultimately, this paper aims to contribute development guidelines that can aid developers in creating more effective visual communication in their serious games, and we primarily focus on exploring what we call the compromise of ‘clarity’ and ‘appeal’ in the creation of game graphics. We present an initial model for choosing at what level in terms of realism/abstraction and taxonomic hierarchy the graphical components of serious games optimally should be produced in order to solve the dilemma of precise, unmistakable, yet appealing visuals in serious games. It all comes down to two primary decisions: defining the taxonomic hierarchy of the items to depict, and choosing the style in which to depict them. With a better understanding of when different game visuals are more or less appropriate, both in terms of style and in which objects are represented, game developers will be able to balance production costs better while also creating something that strikes the compromise between clarity and appeal.

In serious game development, effective communication through both languages, sounds, and icons can be crucial for a game to have its intended impact. While this is also true for entertainment games, serious games have added layers of challenges as they are a) often played by audiences outside of the “typical” game ecosystem, and b) miscommunication can lead to players missing important lessons or even learning incorrect information. When a serious game is intended to be used in different parts of the world, however, clear visual communication gets an added layer of complexity: culturally informed symbol interpretation and visual preference. In order to examine how these might affect players’ experiences when playing serious games, this paper presents the results of a mixed-method study conducted in two schools in Nepal. The study included 10 participants, between 13-16 years old, who played a prototype of a mobile game currently in development, which has the purpose of teaching young players about food nutrition and healthy habits. After playing the prototype, they took a short survey where they were asked to identify different food types, and they were also interviewed to discuss their opinions of the game’s visual style. The results of the study indicate that, while higher fidelity images were much easier to correctly identify by the participants, the participants’ preference for visual fidelity varied to a large degree.

The visuals of a game is a crucial element when it comes to providing good player experiences. Visuals are also an incredibly complex subject in a game context since different modes of visual representation can be more or less “appropriate” for different settings. For example, while one can look at photo-realism as an impressive feature of a game due to its technical complexity and functionally accurate representation of real-world objects, it might still not be a fitting choice for different audiences, or for different pedagogical strategies. Serious game research seldom focuses on understanding the design of these components or their applicability to different types of learning, and it more often focuses on games’ mechanics and how well they manage to capture subject matter content while still being engaging. The aim of this paper is to explore the gap in visual communication research, describing what studies tend to focus on providing some valuable context. This review was conducted on papers that dealt with visual aspects of serious games. The results show that visual communication is rarely addressed in serious game development research. Future research would benefit from taking visual communication in detail to facilitate the effectiveness of serious games.

Videogames have a long, and complex, relationship with “non-Western” countries. Game narratives and ludic symbols are fraught with implicit, or explicit, imperialist history and ideologies. In some games, such as Sid Meier’s Colonization, the connection is fairly obvious. But a game doesn’t have to be about colonization to present a colonialist narrative. Souvik Mukherjee is a game researcher at the front of a growing discussion on this topic. In his work, he analyses games from different perspective (media analysis, philosophy, and sociology) to present a holistic understanding of the way games represent, and constructs, different cultures, people, political systems, ethics, and societal issues. This chapter is an edited transcript of an interview with Souvik, where we talked about everything from his academic work, to how he modded Age of Empires in his childhood.

What Happens When We Play: A Critical Approach to Games User Experience Design & Education brings together research and reflection from both faculty and graduate students involved in University of Skövde’s Games User Experience (GUX) Master’s program, launched in 2020. The collection shares insights from the new GUX curriculum, which takes a critical-making approach, combining practical projects done in collaboration with game studios, critical cultural theory and history, and design theory and hands-on work in the practice of games user experience design and analysis.

This paper aims to explore some of the inherent dichotomies between games and learning. This is not referring to the already thoroughly discussed challenge of merging learning content into appealing and engaging game design, but rather to a more fundamental question whether games, as a medium and as technological objects, are well suited to convey learning content. In order to anchor this discussion in something more concrete, the paper will describe a project in which a learning game was created, and describe some of the main development and design challenges encountered during the project. These challenges revealed a necessity of often going in directions directly opposed to what is considered to be good game design principles, as well as limitations in what type of messages the medium of digital games can efficiently convey. For example, clear goals and progression, feedback on actions, providing players with clear information, and empowering player agency, while often suitable in creating good games, are not suitable when representing complex issues in educational games. Based on these insights, the paper concludes with a broader discussion regarding the validity of some core tenets of game-based learning, and calls for a less instrument-focused and game-oriented way of creating and discussing games’ relationship to learning and education.

The nature of ‘reading’ different types of texts, across all media, is fundamentally beholden to the concept of ‘literacy’. The concept of literacy is well established in media studies – from books, to film, and visual, performing and interactive arts – and as such it has a wide range of applicability. All forms of media constitute a semiotic milieu in which signifiers and codes mean different things depending on the form’s unique language and the contexts and manner in which individual participants, or “readers”, approach them. In the field of digital games research, literacy is commonly defined as a narrower concept that refers to the ability to identify affordances and interact with game components with a high degree of confidence. This focus on capability is understandable to a degree: the unique aspect of games as a medium is often considered to specifically be its interactability, and thus being able to interact becomes synonymous with being ‘game literate’. In this paper, however, we will both describe how literacy in games would benefit from a more nuanced, transhistorical view of interactability, as well as provide examples from many kinds of media beyond games to demonstrate that interaction literacy is neither novel nor unique to the medium of games. Understanding this rich history would provide a broader foundation of referential literature for game scholars to use when discussing the concept of game literacy and the interactability of media in general.

Research has found that successful game-based learning (GBL) is dependent on several factors, e.g. students, parents, teachers and educational setting. Nevertheless, many existing GBL solutions primarily consider the student. Similarly, they focus on imparting and assessing content-specific knowledge rather than encouraging students to become intrinsically motivated learners. This paper presents CURIO, an educational game kit that involves teachers as ‘game masters’. It encourages inquisitive mindsets in students and helps to structure discussions when introducing a new topic in class. It informs the teacher of students’ pre-existing knowledge so that they can better shape upcoming classes to their needs. A pilot study with a class of 25 primary school students and their homeroom teacher evaluated a prototype of CURIO. The paper concludes with guidelines learned from creating and testing CURIO that can help with the development of tools for teachers using the same design philosophy.

Interactive digital media, and in particular digital games, are an increasingly prevalent component of museums and other public cultural spaces to help engage visitors. However, despite their growing presence, they remain under-explored in the ways they mediate a wide variety of cultural expressions and interactions through their differing and unique narrative affordances. Such storytelling differences must be accounted for in order to understand how they may be facilitated and curated with visitors/players in mind. The medium is defined by diminished authorial control in favor of free play and individual agency of expression for players. As such games for heritage present interesting challenges for those who may want to develop, facilitate, and curate them in cultural contexts and with historically accurate content. In fact, the lack of control over content once it becomes interactive and playful can present significant challenges to museum curators, pedagogues and guides. As facilitators of cultural knowledge, they often need to strike a balance between informing visitors/players about cultural heritage and history through deliberately crafted narratives - something museums are well equipped to do - while also providing players with more agency to individually express themselves and to re-write cultural heritage stories and histories through narrative play. In this paper, we present three case studies that exemplify how digital games can be used to give children a less restrictive narrative framework in which they can perform and express history and cultural heritage, rather than by merely re-enacting it. Through these three cases, we describe the processes involved in using digital games as a collaborative stage, or performative platform, on which participants can craft their own narratives to experience and express their own histories and build connections to others in a shared community of play.