Serious Games: Video Game Design Techniques for Academic and Commercial Communication

Abstract

Serious Games: Video game design techniques for academic and commercial communication, by Christian Bull-Hansen, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway.

Traditional academic and commercial communication sources, like schools and television, are losing ground to video games. People of all ages spend increasingly more time engaged in virtual worlds and on the Internet, and are becoming used to actively pursuing the information they want to know more about, while rejecting the old passive communication channels where information is presented, but not requested. The result is a generation in need of new ways of informing.

This thesis aims to provide ways for academic and commercial communication to exist in commercially popular video games while retaining the entertainment value of the games. Thus making students learn while gaming, as well as provide means for commercial interests to reach the gamer audience.

The thesis provides information and analysis of game culture, player-types, social structures, game design techniques, and how knowledge of this information can be used to create and improve academic and commercial communication in video games.

The thesis utilizes a custom made prototype, “The Renaissance Prototype”, designed for the purpose of researching and test the theories presented in this thesis.