Serious Games
A few student-produced serious mini-games. Most students had no experience with computer code, interaction design, or similar subjects.
“Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.”
― Mark Twain
"Play is the highest form of research."
- Albert Einstein
“These things are fun and fun is good.
- Dr. Seuss
Good Fun
The low-fidelity (left), and the high-fidelity Apple Watch haptic game.
The low-fidelity version was used to test gameplay so that the slick features of the high-fidelity watch would not skew test results.
After trying my game, the woman cried.
She was testing a haptic (vibration-based) Apple watch game. I designed, learned to code, and produced the game.
But, instead of laughing or smiling, she was crying.
I asked what was wrong.
Nothing, she said. They were tears of joy, she explained.
The woman was blind and had been a gamer.
Much of her life was spent riding public transportation. And those commutes were painfully boring for her.
She was crying because there was a hope of relieving that boredom. And there was hope that she would again have the ability to play simple games.
Games can have serious, beneficial effects on people. They have power.
It was for this reason that I created classes, and then collaboratively produced a University minor, in Serious Games.
Student games produced under my tutelage were awarded with in national and international competitions. The minor was funded by a grant by the Nevada NASA Space Grant Consortium.
A newspaper article announcing the Serious Games program’s funding.
Teaching games
As with many innovations, successful game development begins with research and empathy.
And that’s how these courses began — not with computer code.
In fact, many times the students and I were learning code at the same time so that we could meet community needs with our games.
A successful Serious Game provides intrinsic rewards for learning about important subjects. And, of course, it is fun.
Those were our goals.
Projects included games on subjects such as teenage homelessness, limited environmental resources, recycling, decoding government acronyms, learning Native American culture, living in a wildfire location, shared resource use, and more.