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Serious Games as a Player in the Creative Industries
Patricia G. Greene
“How incredible would it be for a professor to say “Pull out your laptops, load up Investhor: Lord of Wall Street, and begin your midterm?” (Interview Response).
I admit I am fascinated by the potential of Serious Games, both for business opportunities as part of the creative industries and also for the role they can play in education and training. There were three trigger events that started me down this path. First, my original interest started years ago watching Star Trek with our children. I wanted a holodeck for teaching - a programmable site that allowed for experiential learning through immersion and interactivity. Second, I began watching three year old children adroitly blend physical and virtual worlds through products such as WebKinz and Club Penguin. These children will make the gamer generation look technologically impaired when they reach our classrooms. And third, I attended the Serious Game Summit of the Game Developers Conference last year and became even more enthralled with games such as America’s Army (game and knowledge platform for recruiting), Cisco’s Learning Network (game arcade for professional development) and Hilton Garden Inns customer service training module (delivered through a PlayStation Game).
The numbers behind these activities are staggering. For the computer gaming industry in general (http://www.grabstats.com/statcategorymain.asp?StatCatID=13)
• U.S. computer and video game software sales grew 22.9 percent in 2007 to $9.5 billion
• 65 percent of American households play computer or video games
• The average game player is 35 years old and has been playing games for 13 years.
• Forty percent of all game players are women (www.theesa.com/gamesindailylife/education/asp).
• Consumers spend $258b/yr on computer games and game systems, with 800 million people worldwide as regular players (Gamer Generation)
Additionally, the numbers and related statistics regarding the Serious Game component are compelling.
• The Apply Group estimates that approximately 20 percent of Global Fortune 500 companies will have adopted gaming for learning purposes by 2012
• Four million people played the United Nations World Food Programme game, Food Force, in the game’s first year (http://www.wfp.org/students-and-teachers/fun-and-learn)
• The U.S. Army created its own video group unit with the intent of investing up to $50 million for game training systems. (www.theesa.com/gamesindailylife/education/asp).
• In 2007 the serious game market was estimated at $400 million (Masie. www.businessandgames.com/blog/2007).
• One estimate was that in 2007 there were 70 serious game companies in the U.S. (www.wired.com/gamelife/2007).
While there are more and more people studying games and the potential for learning from a variety of different disciplines, Serious Games as an emerging industry is a virtually untouched area of investigation.
What is a Serious Game?
Defining a serious game as a game used for education or training is overly wide and doesn’t capture the range of the opportunity. Sawyer and Smith’s (2008) inventory of terms includes Educational Games, Simulation, Virtual Reality, Alternative Purpose Games, Edutainment, Digital Game-Based Learning, Immersive Learning Simulations, Social Impact Games, Persuasive Games, Games for Change, Games for Good, and Synthetic Learning Environments. A Forrester research report provided the definition that may be the most helpful, describing serious games as “the use of games or gaming dynamics not simply to entertain the player, but rather to inspire a particular action, effect some type of attitudinal change, or instill a particular lesson in the service of an organizational goal” (Keitt, 2008, p. 3).
What is supporting the growth of this industry?
The Serious Game Industry is benefiting from the pulls of both supply and demand. From the demand side, a great deal has been written about the changing technological skills and learning nature of our students. There is still a debate on whether computer gaming is a societal positive or negative and that debate will become even more interesting as people who grew up as gamers become the industrial, academic, and parental decision makers. From the supply side, changes in technology also support a serious game environment. As with most technologies, over time application development becomes more economical and market reach grows
Who is selling?
Games become serious in a variety of ways. Large technology businesses such as Cisco can support the creation of their own games. Hilton Garden Inns contracted the work to a gaming company. I’m using an existing commercial game off the shelf (COTS) for my next course on Entrepreneurial Culture and my skills definitely don’t extend to programming enhancements. However, commercial games can be the development platform. Rizway-uddin, a professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, showed me how his students use the game, Unreal Tournament for the “developer platform.” In this case (teaching nuclear engineering), when a virtual model was needed of the lab, the cost was $60 for the game and 20 hours of graduate assistant time (priceless).
Who is buying?
The question of market for Serious Games is one of primary concern to those in the industry with descriptions ranging from “anyone who wants to learn anything” to tightly focused industry targets. Those areas most often identified are the military/defense, education, emergency management, healthcare, and corporate training, with a sprinkling in most other industries as well.
Practical Implications and Challenges for Entrepreneurs (and therefore Entrepreneurship Educators)
The Serious Game Industry as part of the creative industries movement is one of great potential. The rise of these businesses has been tied to demographic and technological changes and trends. Challenges for emerging businesses as well as the overall industry include:
1. Opportunities span multiple markets, including (but not necessarily limited to) primary and secondary school systems, universities, military forces, large and small businesses.
2. It is difficult to sell to schools. Challenges include not only procurement processes and timetables, but also fitting into a prescribed curriculum.
3. There are still questions about the legitimacy of using games in certain learning environments.
4. Creating a market is always more difficult and more expensive than meeting a market and most organizations do not yet understand what is available and how it might be used.
5. Few Serious Game companies have figured out an appropriate business model that can support game development, including the subject matter experts, educational specialists, and game developers and then adds on the marketing and distribution activities.
Until the holodeck is commercially available and affordable, Serious Games will just have to do.
Patricia G. Greene, Blank Center for Entrepreneurship, Babson College, USA