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Personalization and Adaptation

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Serious Games

Abstract

Computing machinery allows the creation of intelligent, personalized, adaptive systems and programs that consider the characteristics, interests, and needs of individual users and user groups. In the field of serious games, storytelling and gaming approaches are used as motivational instruments for suspenseful, engaging learning, or personalized training and healthcare. This chapter describes models and mechanisms for the development of personalized, adaptive serious games with a focus on digital educational games (DEG). First, the term adaptation is defined—both in general and in the context of games—and basic mechanisms such as the concept of flow are described. Then, player and learner models are analyzed for classification of player characteristics. For the control of serious games, adaptive storytelling and sequencing mechanisms are described. In particular, the concept of Narrative Game-based Learning Objects (NGLOBs) is presented, which considers the symbiosis of gaming, learning, and storytelling in the context of an adaptive DEG. Finally, the presented theoretical concepts, models, and mechanisms are discussed in the course of the 80Days project as a DEG best-practice example—which considers authoring, control, and evaluation aspects, and its practical implementation in 80Days using the authoring framework StoryTec.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Stefan Göbel & Viktor Wendel

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  1. Stefan Göbel
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  2. Viktor Wendel
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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., Wendel, V. (2016). Personalization and Adaptation. In: Dörner, R., Göbel, S., Effelsberg, W., Wiemeyer, J. (eds) Serious Games. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40612-1_7

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