Currents
Video can do more than entertain
The next revolution in video-game design will be the emergence of "serious games."
Serious games are games with a purpose beyond entertainment, including (but not limited to) games for learning, games for health, and games for policy and social change. To the art of fun, serious games add a serious purpose. They also apply scientific principles and methods to make more effective, more engaging games. Designing such games requires theoretical understanding of learning, cognition, emotion and play.
The $12.5 billion commercial success of entertainment video games - and the energy and brainpower players of all ages devote to playing them - has attracted a great deal of attention. Everyone wants to study them: scientists, educators, doctors, psychiatrists, advocacy groups, politicians and others with noble and nefarious intentions. In the 35 years since people could first play Pong on a home video-game system in their living rooms, game designers have transformed the art of creating interactive fun.
These aren't serious games, but they're pretty great. Today's games do involve learning. Complex games such as Pokémon, Final Fantasy, or World of Warcraft take hours to learn to play and even longer to achieve real expertise. And today's games do reward, reinforce and support learning. Education scholars say that in structure and design, video games are great teachers.
The problem is that most of what players learn has no meaning or relevance outside of the game.
Today's games do engage the brain; different kinds of games engage different parts. Learning is one domain. Games such as Tetris and, to a lesser extent, Bejeweled, call upon visuospatial processing (the brain's ability to perceive the spatial relationships among objects and to identify what those objects are). Playing a game as a first-person shooter - that is, playing a game with on-screen view that simulates the character's point of view, usually while using a handheld weapon - uses visual perception and attention, as well as eye-hand coordination. A study by Beth Israel Medical Center found that laparoscopic surgeons benefited from playing games as first-person shooters. These surgeons committed fewer errors and completed surgery faster than those who did not play. First question when speaking to a surgeon: "Do you play Halo?"
But such benefits are unintended side effects. Commercial games are not designed to do anything other than entertain. Mental and physical challenges stimulate changes in the brain, reinforcing existing cognitive structures and growing new neural pathways.
Imagine games rooted in science, intentionally designed to engage the brain - those could presumably be far more powerful. Combined with great game design, they could also be fun.
Electronic games differ fundamentally from media such as television and movies, in which the user is more passive. Players can experience different points of view, solve problems the way experts do, and discover hidden patterns and relationships. Games involve far greater player participation from moment to moment than the act of reading a book or newspaper. They engage emotion and attention and allow players to try out what-if scenarios.
Someday informed citizens might ask to "play the candidates" and the issues before voting in presidential elections. (If games turn out to be as powerful as we expect, people should be careful not to believe everything they play.) Want to understand local and global challenges, from world hunger to emergency preparedness? Someday your best bet might be a serious game. Games may be designed to relax people at the end of a hard day, or to energize and prepare them for a forthcoming test or presentation. Children will "win" eighth grade. Therapists probably will prescribe "quit smoking" and "antidepressant" games. Physicians may prescribe games as often as they prescribe medication.
As games proliferate from the realm of entertainment into that of everyday life and work, we will increasingly expect life to be fun. In-car games and on-refrigerator games can add market value and serve social or commercial goals. Imagine buying a car with a built-in game display on the dashboard, and game inputs in the steering wheel and pedals. Of course, the driving game would reward insanely great, safe driving.
Instead of the "smart refrigerator" visionaries sometimes imagine, watch for the "smart yet fun yet good for you refrigerator," which challenges you to nutrition, recipe, microbial-growth and trivia games based on what is currently inside.
Game design for entertainment already requires diverse, multidisciplinary expertise. Serious game design calls on a vastly wider range of expertise and roles. My university is launching a graduate-level serious game design track in the Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media Master of Arts program. Faculty from 11 other departments - advertising; communication; communicative sciences and disorders; computer science; education; epidemiology; horticulture (that's right); journalism (that's right, too); museum studies; neurology, and professional writing - are involved.
We embrace the hope - but do not unquestioningly accept the hype - that serious games can be a panacea. But I want to find out.