Serious Games Evaluation: Processes, Models, and Concepts

Serious games are developed with the goal of having a certain impact on players which goes beyond mere entertainment. This purpose-driven design is immanent to serious games and can be stated as the key characteristic that distinguishes serious games from other digital games. Hence, verifying that a serious game has the intended effect on the players needs to be an essential part in the development process. This and the following chapters are therefore dedicated to give a guidance how evaluation procedures can be planned and realized. The main focus is on aspects which are particularly distinctive to the evaluation of serious games, while methods and principles related to the evaluation of digital games in general will not be covered in detail. The structure of this chapter is as follows: After emphasizing the specific importance of evaluation for serious games, we describe a set of challenges which might occur in this context. In order to enable the reader to face these challenges, we present a framework of evaluation-driven design which offers guidance in the evaluation process. Other models which address different challenges are described before three examples of commendably evaluated serious games are discussed. These examples are intended to demonstrate how the presented abstract models can be applied in concrete evaluation procedures.