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Trends and applications of serious gaming and social media
Baek Y., Ko R., Marsh T., Springer Publishing Company, Incorporated, New York, NY, 2014. 180 pp. Type: Book
Date Reviewed: Jul 28 2014

Baek, Ko, and Marsh have produced what I found to be a rather interesting collection of papers that survey serious gaming and its applications. The authors describe the use of game elements and game design techniques in non-game contexts. This is called “gamification,” where elements such as players, scores, and heads-up displays (HUDs) are used in “serious games,” as well as in educational and business environments. This practice derives from game development in the 1980s onward (http://british-legends.com/CMS/), and is later taken up as serious games. Gamification typically results in everyday business tasks becoming more engaging for a user, and it is able to motivate and influence user behaviors.

This edited volume contains 11 papers that cover substantial ground in explaining game design concepts and immersive technologies that engage, motivate, and persuade. The approach is not to make a game, but rather to select elements from game design that make information or ideas more accessible to a user in whatever media or platform has been chosen. Studies in social networking are also presented in the latter sections of the book.

A structuralist approach is taken that lists and categorizes game structures, such as mechanics, taxonomies/structures for achievement systems (Galli and Fraternali), interaction patterns (Baek and Choi), and behavioral/persuasive triggers (Tan, Xi, and Marsh). While these concepts are not new, they are elements that have been developed and can be selected and moved (gamification) into serious games or other platforms.

The impact of serious games and immersive technology is discussed first by Wortly. He identifies the serious game America’s Army as a highly successful tool for recruiting young people into the US Armed Forces, and as a tool for training and simulation. He reiterates one of the fundamental principles of game studies: that the enjoyment of games leads to an engagement that can exclude all else. This facilitates the development of a flow of consciousness within the game universe that closes off all other stimuli. This concept is presented in various ways throughout the literature and cited in several of the bibliographies in this volume.

Wortly’s paper provides a comprehensive wrap up of serious games and immersive technologies and their impacts up to the present time. He concludes that these will be the influencers of “citizen and consumer behavior” in a way that has been unprecedented in the history of humankind.

De Prato et al. focus on e-services as the future platform for games via online spaces such as the cloud and on mobile devices. They take an ecosystem perspective with three basic mechanisms (mobile networks, short-range wireless, and fixed Internet). This is a paper that gives good background, but ultimately the authors propose a wait-and-see position.

Galli and Fraternali take a closer look at achievement systems. These are important elements where a user can track their progress and ratings, for example. They are strongly linked to points, rewards, and content unlocking. They are an important element of user engagement, even in nongame contexts. The authors provide what I found to be an accessible history of the achievement element. They then deliver an achievement design section. Anyone involved in designing interactive systems will find the taxonomy they present useful to clarify types of achievements, such as quests, content discovery, Herculean tasks, and loyalty, to name some of those discussed. This is a very comprehensive guide, and one of the best in this book.

Tan, Xi, and Marsh introduce a system using persuasive game technology. Its purpose is to inform users about savings and money management. This chapter will appeal to any organization looking to influence or change users’ actions or attitudes. The authors focus on triggers that can be deployed at significant moments when a user demonstrates a lack of motivation and targeted behavior is desired. They also point out differences between persuasive technology and persuasive games. This is a well-researched and presented paper that would attract marketers, community groups, and academic and health informatics researchers.

Behavioral malware analysis is a novel technique to deal with malicious software, or malware, including viruses, rootkits, and back doors. Subramanian and Loh provide a set of algorithms and deploy inverse decision theory to identify benign or malicious profiles. For me, the sections on the system framework and social angle were more accessible.

The six papers that follow present evaluation and results of research studies for social networking and games for learning. These studies are on gamification in mental health interventions (Boon and Fung), education and social network games (Baek and Choi), an analysis of a social network game (Lee), learning subject knowledge through social network games (Hui and Tam), a study of World of Warcraft (da Silva), and learning through playing (Hui and Tam).

There are numerous studies of social or online networked games reported in the literature, and I did not find the later chapters in this collection as compelling as the previous ones. I was pleased to see the high-quality color screen shots in this book. This is a good example of making material more accessible than when only grayscale screen shots are used.

The social network selections in this book, such as Farmville, a Facebook app, and World of Warcraft, for example, were interesting, but a lack of discussion about user privacy and security left a gap in the write-ups. Furthermore, I wonder about the ethics of compelling students, including those who might be dealing with Facebook addiction, to work within social networks that are known to collect and take ownership of user data.

This is one of the more interesting books dealing with serious games that I have read in some time. In addition to this book, there are several relatively recent studies of interest that contribute to game terminology. Carter, Gibbs, and Harrop [1], for example, contribute to the development of gamification and serious games vocabularies that describe “conceptually difficult activities associated with game play.” Susi, Johannesson, and Backlund [2] also present an overview of serious games, related concepts, and terms.

Reviewer:  Alyx Macfadyen Review #: CR142554 (1410-0857)
1) Carter, M.; Gibbs, M.; Harrop, M. Metagames, paragames and orthogames: a new vocabulary. In FDG '12. ACM, 2012, 11–17.
2) Susi, T.; Johannesson, M.; Backlund, P. Serious games – an overview. Technical Report HS- IKI -TR-07-001 (2007), University of Skövde, Sweden, 1 – 28.
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