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Serious Games Application Examples

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Serious Games

Abstract

Serious games are useful in a broad spectrum of application domains—ranging from educational games for younger audiences, to collaborative training and simulation environments for industry, or games for health and behavior change. Other examples include games for culture and tourism, marketing and advertising, participation and planning for public awareness, and social impact games covering societal relevant topics such as security, religion, climate, or energy. This chapter starts with a technology-driven approach to the broad field of serious games and an introduction of the most relevant application areas of serious games, with a rough summary of their characteristics in terms of domain-specific economic and technical aspects. Then, a set of selected best-practice examples per serious game application area is provided. Hereby, a coherent description format is used based on a first version of a metadata format for serious games introduced by Göbel in 2011, which considers typical descriptive elements for games used in game archives and game rating systems. Description elements contain the title of a serious game, its application area and target user group, its characterizing goal and a short description of the gameplay (including a snapshot), distribution info (including access to the game, supported platforms, and price), economic information (business model and development costs), quality information (evaluation studies, certificates, ratings, awards), and further information (point of contact, website, developer, publisher). Combining economic and quality information provides valuable indicators for potential customers about the cost-benefit ratio of the serious games.

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Acknowledgments

Most of the best-practice examples are provided by members of the GAME association of Game Developers in Germany (http://game-bundesverband.de/) and the working group on “Entertainment Computing” of the German Society of Computer Scientists (https://www.gi.de/aktuelles/meldungen/detailansicht/article/fachgruppe-entertainment-computing-gegruendet.html). Further valuable input has been provided by different colleagues specialized in dedicated Serious Games application areas. Many thanks!

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  1. Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Stefan Göbel

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  1. Stefan Göbel
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Correspondence to Stefan Göbel .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Design, Computer Science, Med, RheinMain University of Applied Sci, Wiesbaden, Hessen, Germany

    Ralf Dörner

  2. Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Stefan Göbel

  3. LS. f. Prakt. Informatik IV, Univ. Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

    Wolfgang Effelsberg

  4. Inst für Sportwissenschaft S1|17 112, Technische Univ Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Hessen, Germany

    Josef Wiemeyer

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Göbel, S. (2016). Serious Games Application Examples. In: Dörner, R., Göbel, S., Effelsberg, W., Wiemeyer, J. (eds) Serious Games. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40612-1_12

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