“Serious Games” is a term used to describe computer and videogames developed for a purpose other than pure entertainment, for example, in the military, health, social policy and education. The Apply Serious Games event (10 July 2008) was intended to explore the state of the debate in this area, as well as to showcase some recent developments.

There was also a strong dose of marketing and business speak, though this probably shouldn’t be seen as surprising given that videogames are a major corporate phenomenon produced and sold in a multibillion-dollar international industry. And this is my point: if we are truly serious about “serious games” then we have to be very serious indeed about the role of this industry in debates about our health, lifestyles, social policies and education. Opening the conference, Prof Richard Bartle claimed that “the army plays games, and not for fun reasons.” Quite. So if games are to be played in schools, what might be the reasons?

Lord David Puttnam (chairman of Futurelab amongst other things) provided the main keynote. Suggesting that videogames seem to many children to be “an antidote to school,” he argued that public policymakers and the games industry need to be involved in a dialogue with educators. Whereas, according to Lord Puttnam, many children experience school as a process of “being done to,” their experience of playing games is one of participation and taking part. The games industry might therefore bring to the current educational debate its expertise in making content accessible and lively while motivating players to continue to overcome complex and difficult challenges. Through playing games, he claimed, players may be able to develop a more subjective view of events and issues, to develop their personal understandings and empathy as well as to experience alternative worlds or versions of the real world that would otherwise be unavailable to them.

Lord Puttnam’s particular interest is in how climate change can be tackled, and he sees games as having a role here. How might serious games illustrate and allow players to explore the effects of climate change? One response was provided by Gobion Rowlands of Red Redemption, who make “socially conscious games,” in the shape of the free game “Climate Challenge” (winner of the 2008 European Green IT award). The game allows players to control the future of the planet by taking on the role of EU president for a year, and it uses accurate data provided by the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC). With over 2million users to date, this is an example of a serious game that remains enterianing. In Rowlands’ words, “fun does not have to be vacuous.”

Dan Hon of Six to Start also demonstrated some non-vacuous fun in his work on the “We Tell Stories” initiative for Penguin books. We Tell Stories presents 6 pieces of short fiction by 6 established authors, but presents them in a variety of ways only made possible by the web. Toby Litt’s “Slice,” for example, is mediated through blog posts on Twitter, while Charles Cummings’s “21 Steps” is told using Google Maps. By developing “social tools to tell stories,” Hon said, the website provides a “fiction experience that isn’t just words.” Although We Tell Stories was not designed specifically for schools, Hon reported a great deal of positive feedback from teachers using the site in classroom activities, adding, “we make entertainment that just happens to be educational.” Both Rowlands and Hon argued that they have no desire to intervene in formal education, but they do want to get involved in it, to contribute to the debate. They represent, perhaps, serious gaming that also happens to be socially responsible and cognizant of a much wider range in the games environment than others might imagine. Neither We Tell Stories nor Climate Challenge are anything like the popular perception of games as fighting, crime and vice simulators. (Which really are “serious” games.)

Other sessions during the day illustrated how the serious games field has grown to accommodate all sorts of styles and forms of what can only loosely be called “playing.” Kevin Corti of Pixelearning put serious games alongside a raft of social networking services and suggested gaming is only one aspect of many young people’s electronic experience. He argued that it is users and not companies who will demonstrate the potential of these technologies and media. This would suggest, maybe, that companies willing to invest in serious gaming should be working alongside users (children, teachers) to develop products, rather than following the standard production process of developing products and thens elling them to schools. And finally, Paul Miller demonstrated the School of Everything, a simple social website that allows users to advertise their expertise in anything they feel qualified to teach and others then to sign up to courses. Classes available online range from knitting to crime scene investigation. It is difficult to see the School of Everything as a serious game at all–yet it assumes that people are best motivated to learn when they are making up their own minds, when they are making decisions, and which they continue to want to learn when it gets tough. This is much like the kind of thinking that gamers say makes them want to carry on playing games–”I’m interested in this, it gets harder, I get better at it.” “Could you have a School of Everything,” Miller asked, “within an institution such as a school?” Could you ask children “what do you want to teach today?”

The Serious Games field is divided between organisations seeking to develop social tools which expand on the notion of what playing games is all about, and the potential business opportunities which might be made available for the games industry in the educational environment. This means that the future of the debate in this area will need to address questions about the role of corporations, the role of small and self-avowedly “responsible” organisations, and the role of politics in educational change. “Corporate” is almost a pejorative term in educational debates (so is “policy”); yet educational change may not come about without the financial interest of the private sector. Lord Puttnam suggested that public-private partnership might be the only business model. For the serious games subsector of the games indsutry, that means working alongside the multinationals and policymakers at the same time. That’s what makes “The Education Game” the most serious of all. Let’s hope it’s the taking part and not the winning that really matters.

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