Paper #5: Tales from the Front Lines of a Large-Scale Serious Game Project

Summary

    Dr. Khaled and Dr. Ingram have done research into the process of game design.  The report begins by explaining the history of game design and game success. It then goes on to briefly explain various types of experts and team compositions.

    They also explain the five active team perspectives : project organization, technology, domain knowledge, user research, and game design.  They had people whom are experts in said fields work together during the process in creating a video game. They observed the visible and invisible forces behind a successful video game. They determined that there's a certain hidden force behind all successful video games and using a rigid strategy isn't how you achieve it.

Related Works not Referenced in Paper

    

• Serious Games: Games That Educate, Train, and Inform
• Serious Games for Language Learning: 
  How Much Game, How Much AI? 
• Serious Games – An Overview
• Game Design as 
  Narrative 
  Architecture
• Game Design : Theory and Practice
• MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research
• A Generic Model for Reflective Design
• Reflective Design Patterns to Implement Fault Tolerance
• What Video Games Have to Teach Us 
  About Learning and Literacy 
• Authentic Learning Experiences Through Play: Games, Simulations and the Construction of Knowledge

There's alot of new information relevant to video games, learning games, and reflective design. I think this paper is novel because of it's unique approach to learning about game design. 

Evaluation

   The paper rated it's success very subjectively and quanitatively. Basically they decided to create a video game and when it wasn't very successful, they didn't use measurements or numbers.

Discussion

    Honestly, after I read the article I didn't feel like they had accomplished much. It was a summary of a unsuccessful experience and we didn't really learn anything that wasn't already known.