Serious game developers try to teach players something. They want to have an impact on the knowledge, attitude, or behavior of people. But why is it so difficult to study this impact, and what can state of the art research tell us about it. With me in studio, Dr. Julia Kneer, Dr.Teresa De La Hera from Erasmus University, and Dr. Ruud Jacobs of the University of Twente. They're all game researchers but working from different scientific perspectives. This is a roundtable on the impact of serious games. Teresa, Ruud, and Julia, welcome to the studio. Let's start by addressing an issue that many of our learners at when it comes to the impact of games. As we've seen this week, there's a lot of research about the impact of violent entertainment games and how they affect behavior, but there's lots of contradicting theories there, the results are inconclusive. We could actually only concluded we don't know what the impact actually is. Now also serious game developers, they need to answer these questions. They need to see what impacts their games have, whether they contribute to learning something, to understanding an issue. They're concerned with a potential positive impact that their games have. Can we conclude from entertainment game research that also in the serious games domain impact is not proven. Well, first of all we need to differentiate a little bit about this non proof and effects. This is absolutely true for wild and games in impression, however, for entertainment games and positive for things such as recovery from stress of coming into a better mood. This affects a given and that is the interesting part, and this is also really important for serious games. But of course entertainment games have the goal to entertain, and serious games have a different goal in to teach or change attitude, change even behavior. This becomes more interesting and more pressing, when we think about that many of the serious games are commissioned by third parties such as NGOs like Greenpeace, and they of course have different Google links, for example, to change attitudes towards climate change. All right. Serious games are absolutely in a better position to talk about impact because of the intent behind their design. To answer your question in a different way Micah, I would say that the evidence for the impact of serious games, it looks a lot healthier than the evidence for the impact of violent games. It's true that some serious games do not really work as they are intended, but over time we've seen that many of my colleagues are finding consistent but small effects of serious games, on player's attitudes and behaviors and the knowledge. For example, the game Spent, which was tested by Dana Ruggiero. It's a game about homelessness, and when comparing this game to a text, Dana Ruggiero found that the game was way more effective in changing attitudes towards the homeless, then a texted, and this effect was also there even after three weeks. After three weeks people were still thinking about the homelessness issue because of this game, and the people who read the text did not. I would even say that we're at a stage where we can move away from testing individual games and start thinking about testing persuasive strategies to be used within games and other kinds of series game design strategies, so that we can give concrete advice to game designers, so that they can make a game that fits with the message that they want to bring out. Serious games are designed for impact. That's the main difference with entertainment games. If I understand you correctly, research can actually help designers in this process. We already discussed persuasiveness previous week. Teresa, you just published a book, The Digital Gaming and the Advertising Landscape. It's about the potential of games as media for persuasion. Can you tell us something about how they are actually designed to achieve the series goals that they have? Yeah, what I explain in my book is that there are multiple elements in the game. I call them persuasive dimensions that we can use to persuade players to achieve a specific serious goal. My claim is that all these elements in the game, for example, the visual design of the characters, the sound or the music that we select, the story line or the rules, everything is something that we can use to convey information to the player. How exactly we combine all these elements to achieve a specific series goal? This is what I call a persuasive strategy. There's the persuasive strategy that's very important, consists of different elements that you can use, but how can we identify what is actually a good persuasive strategy? That is a good question. Well, I could say that a good persuasive strategy, is a strategy in which all the elements in the game were designed thinking, or having the serious goal in mind. Because these games have an engagement goal, and a serious goal. We want to make sure that the serious message gets through, but we also want to make sure our players are engaged. Sometimes what happens, is that we introduce an element in the game, only thinking about the engagement purposes, but we forget about this serious purposes. A good example is, for example, a game in which we have a text that players have to read, in order to get the serious message, but also there is a time limitation that is introduced, in order to increase engagement. The chances are high that our players are not going to read the text, because they are feeling the time pressure. This is because the time limitation was introduced in there, only having the engagement goals in mind, and they completely forgot about the serious goals in that case. Alright. So the impact, not only depends on the persuasive elements, but it also really depends on the engagement. You need to be into the game to actually make it work. It seems from what you're telling me, that games are more suitable than other media products, actually, to achieve impact. Maybe they even have more impact. [inaudible] why do players experience serious games so much differently than just watching, for example, a YouTube video? I wouldn't say that this is the same for the entire medium, so my answer only reflects the kind of games that I've studied. But in those games, what I really saw, is that, it's the player choice, it's the player agency that sets it apart from any other experience. Because you are doing something in the game, you see the results of your behavior, and that's very important. I think about My Cotton Picking Life, which is a game where you're picking cotton, and I tested this game against a YouTube clip about the same topic. The YouTube clip, and the game, they had the same effect on whether people felt empowered to stop cotton picking, and whether people recognized it as slavery, which it is. But the game was slightly different, because it let players experience what it was like. They suddenly felt that the work was a lot harder than the people who watched the clip did. They felt it was hard, and tedious, even though it was just a virtual experience. That makes the game more impactful, because of their own choices, because of their own behavior. In a later study, we changed this game-play aspect. We made it easier to pick cotton, and we noticed just by making the game play a little bit easier, the entire persuasive message of the game was cut in half. It was half as persuasive, just because of the procedural rhetoric, the game-play message being removed from the game. Alright. So the engagement can also be that it's a little bit challenging to actually play the game. Yes. Right? Yeah. Now let's take a look at a practical example of a serious game, it's design, and its impact. [inaudible] , you created your own game called Falkland, in which the positive effects of smoking are criticized. We have a video for you, in which you can see what the game is about, and I think [inaudible] we are going to hear your voice, because I've been informed that you did the voice over here. I did, yeah. Let's have a look. Do you know someone who smokes, or are you even a smoker yourself? Do you really think that anyone smokes with the aim to get sick? Why do you think people smoke? The two most common motivations for smoking, are still, social interaction, and stress reduction. So let's think about how we can use this knowledge to help people to reduce, or to even stop smoking. At Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Department of Media and Communication, [inaudible] , and [inaudible] , together with [inaudible] , from the games developer [inaudible] , developed a new game called Falkland. This game addresses the two reasons for smoking. The first goal is to help game characters to quit smoking, by offering them alternatives. So [inaudible] , let's do some gardening, and try some yoga, so you can quit smoking now. The second goal, is to raise awareness, and sensitivity towards situations that are likely to result in relapse. So [inaudible] , I'm sorry. But now, you have some loves sickness, and you will start smoking again, sorry. Each round is played within seven minutes, the time that is usually needed to smoke a cigarette. The effect of Falkland was tested in laboratory studies. Indeed, it was found that playing Falkland, reduced feelings of sadness. Players felt more awake and their mood was improved in general. Most importantly, the more players felt autonomy and got immersed into Falkland, the less cigarettes they smoked during the next day. I hope we convinced you about our idea. Don't smoke. Play Falkland. Julia, how did you design this game? Well, this game, the game idea came from my own research on smoking. This research showed mainly in two things. First one, not surprisingly, no one smokes to get sick. The second one that's really an interesting one, if you attack the smoker directly by showing him, hey, your behavior is not the smartest one. This person becomes very protective because no one wants to be judged. What we figured out is that it is better not to really address the person himself, but give the person a chance to be responsible for someone else like you saw in the small video. Then we started developing the game together with my Michael Bas from &ranj, from the game developer &ranj in Rotterdam. I designed the structure and the rules for Falkland. So you cannot attack smokers that smoking is bad for them, you'll have to find other ways to persuade them actually. But how do you establish then the impact that your game has? Together with my colleagues at [inaudible] we developed a lot of methods concerning underlying processes if a smoker is attacked of their behavior. These methods, these measurements, they were adapted to be used for the research on Falkland. What we mainly found is that also other measurements that are used in the entertainment games area are useful to investigate also the serious game Falkland, and we saw that the more immersed the person was in this game, the less the person smoked within the next 24 hours what is quite interesting. You measured actually effects in 24 hours to the impact of the game. As we know, this is quite a short-term, 24 hours. Were there also any research project about the long-term effects? So far we do not have any results for long-term effects as Falkland is a board game. We want to develop a digital version and then we are also able to investigate if it has long-term effects. So that's work in progress? Work in progress. Well, as we know there are different methods to actually establish whether or not a game is impact. We've learned about this in this course. You have quantitative methods, you have qualitative methods. Each method has its own benefits and its own challenges. Teresa, can you tell us something about what do you think is the most useful method to actually establish the impact of serious games? Well, from my perspective all methods help us to understand a little bit better the impact of serious games. The game Against All Odds is a good example. This was a game that was designed to put players in the shoes of refugees in order to increase empathy. Quantitative studies on these games showed that there were no long-lasting effects, no substantial value of identification and immersion if we compare it to other media forms. A complimentary qualitative study showed that players actually were able to understand the narrative of the game. They were able to understand that it was about empathy, but they personally did not agree with the narrative. This was the main reason they did not empathize, mainly because they thought that the narrative was not realistic enough. This is a good example how qualitative study can explain or help to explain a little bit the results of a quantitative study. Actually they both need each other to a certain extent. What do you think is the biggest challenge for game researchers who really want to know about the impact of serious games. What is the most difficult thing? I think the challenge is linked to the fact that the impact of serious games is not only related to the design of the game itself, but also to the performances of the players on the contexts in which the game is played. The game is interactive by nature so players are going to somehow have impact on the final experience, on interpretation, and also the context. For example, we could be distracted while playing the game or maybe there is extra information that is provided at the beginning. All of these is going to somehow influence the impact. But these challenges from my perspective are common to media studies so are not only linked to serious games [inaudible] so is still the results of all the studies that we have so far gave us a good indication on the value on the impact of these games. As researchers, we've learned also to deal with these challenges along the way. Well, I think we can conclude that doing research about impact is not easy. You've all experienced that in practice. What might be a more joyful part of the game that you're probably also allowed to play lot of games yourself while doing your research. What is your personal favorite when it comes to serious games? Maybe an example that's also shows the impact that a game can have. I would say. It's not one game that is my favorite, but it's a whole genre of them. Every year there's a design challenge for people around the world to design a game about abuse in relationships among teenagers. This is not a joyful topic. These games are actually quite tragic to play as well, but they're also very impactful, and you see a very solemn treatment of these games. I tested two of these games in my own studies. One game is called Another Chance. It's a narrative oriented game and it's linear, so you only see what happens to your protagonist as you go through the game when she realizes that her boyfriend's behaviors are very abusive. I compare this to another game called Power and Control, which was a game about the game play. In the game play, you were avoiding someone who is abusing you. It sounds like a horrible game, but it's actually a very powerful experience to play. When I tested these games against the Control game, I found that these games had an impact on, of course, the acceptance of abusive behaviors that went down, but I also saw that self-efficacy of people to deal with abusive behaviors that also went down. People felt less powerful in stopping or detecting abuse. It sounds like a negative effect, but I interpret this as meaning that people realized that the scope is larger than they thought, it's a bigger problem than they thought. It's actually a conversation starter in that way. What's more, when I tested these games against each other, I noticed that they had the exact same effect, even though one of them was very game play oriented, the other ones were very narrative oriented. One was very much longer to play, they had the same effect, which means designers have some free creativity, and they can approach it in any way they want, as long as they focus on fitting the message to the game play strategy that they're thinking about. All right, so we also learned that there's not just one recipe for impact, but there might be multiple ways in which you can achieve the same goal with your game. Now, as a last question, to close up this roundtable for all of you actually, which is little bit more practical. If you have to give one advice to game designers, people are really in the process of making their own serious game, what would that be? Well, based on my insights and that is pretty much in line with the entertainment games research shows us, a game has to be immersive to be effective. That means people need to dive into it and maybe even get a little bit addicted. A little bit of addiction is okay here. At the same time though, I would say that engagement can be operationalized in very different ways. Designers should not only focus on making games fun and it's very traditional sense like they're laughing, they should focus on emotional response instead. Do you want players to get angry about your message? Do you want things to feel empowered? Do you want them to reflect? That's what a game designer should focus on, the emotional experience they're going for. Okay, so a serious game should not only be informative, but it should also be engaging and emotional. People should feel something when they actually play. It should aim for a certain experience, yeah All right. Teresa, your last advice? My advice would be to pay attention to serious goals and engagement goals and make sure that they are aligned, that there are no inconsistencies, because that can prevent serious message to get through. All right. I want to thank all three of you for coming to the studio and sharing all your expertise and knowledge with us, that was very insightful. To our learners, if you have any questions left about what we've been talking about today, please feel free to post your questions or your remarks on our forum. Next week is already the last week of this course in which we will take you back, and we'll show you the lessons learned during this whole MOOC and give you a sneak peek into the future of serious games. See you there.
