Game controls: A challenge for serious games

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I like to discuss one of the biggest problems for serious games. These games are targeting the learners of a specific topic, who might not have a gaming background and thus need to understand the game controls and the new knowledge at the same time.

In general, computer games are developed for people who are interested in playing games and who like to be entertained by games. However, there’re also computer games with a more serious background. Although these games are still computer games, their main purpose is mostly to educate or train the players. These games can be still entertaining, but the entertainment isn’t the main focus of these kind of games. Games with such an educational purpose are called serious games.

In contrast to regular computer games, serious games aren’t targeting only experienced computer game players but also learners without a gaming background. Computer game players are used to control their actions in the game with the computer peripherals. Movement in a game is often requiring inputs over the keyboard whereas the view of the player is often changed by mouse movements. The combination of both devices allows the player to walk and look around in a virtual environment. Over time, this control scheme becomes natural to the player as walking around in the real world. Computer game players aren’t distracted by figuring out how to move from A to B and thus are able to focus on the action in the virtual world.

Non-gaming learners don’t have this background. They might be used to operate a computer during their regular office work or to search for new information on the internet. However, they aren’t used to explore a virtual three dimensional room using their regular input devices. These new gamers are more challenged by wrapping their head around the movement controls than on focussing on the training task offered in the game. Finally, these new gamers would have to achieve two learning goals at once: learning to control their actions in the game and understanding the presented knowledge.

Regular computer games often try to help new gamers by offering some tutorial missions. During these early missions, the new players is often accompanied by a non-player character (NPC) who explains the basics of the game. Moreover, the NPC also gives hints which key is used to perform a certain action.
Such a tutorial mission could be also helpful for new players of a serious game to introduce them to the keybindings of the game. Unfortunately, tutorial missions don’t really help to understand the general relationship between the control interfaces and the actions going on on the screen. Completely new computer game users need to develop the general understanding that they’ve a „presence“ in the virtual world and thus that they can interact with it.

This problem isn’t really easy to solve. The serious game could also offer some kind of „sandbox mode“ which allows new gamers to gain more experience in moving in a virtual world. However, the main issue still remains: the new unexperienced game-learner needs to achieve a general understanding about the own virtual presence in a game. Only after this understanding is achieved, the new game-learner will be able to focus on the presented learning goals.