Björn Berg Marklund

A Game-Based Approach to Support Social Presence and Awareness in Distributed Project-Based Learning

An important factor for success in project-based learning PBL is that the involved project groups establish an atmosphere of social interaction in their working environment. In PBL-scenarios situated in distributed environments, most of a groups work-processes are mediated through the use of production-focused tools that are unconcerned with the important informal and social aspects of a project. On the other hand, there are plenty of tools and platforms that focus on doing the opposite and mainly support informal bonding e.g., Facebook, but these types of environments can be obtrusive and contain distractions that can be detrimental to a groups productivity and are thus often excluded from working environments. The aim of this paper is to examine how a game-based multi-user environment MUVE can be designed to support project-based learning by bridging the gap between productivity-focused and social software. To explore this, the authors developed a game-based MUVE which was evaluated in a PBL-scenario. The result of the study revealed several crucial design elements that are needed to make such a MUVE work effectively, and that the acceptance towards game-based MUVEs is high, even with a rudimentary execution.

Game development from a software and creative product perspective: A quantitative literature review approach

This article presents the methodology and initial analysis of a systematic literature review that aims to explore how the craft and processes of game development have been studied in previous resea ...

Developing games for non-leisure contexts: Identification of challenges and research gaps

The use of games in non-leisure contexts is referred to as serious games. The tradition of using games for purposes beyond entertainment goes back a long time before digital games. However, with the advent of digital games, serious games development has become an issue of both game design and technology development in various combinations. This paper presents a literature review of what types of topics are studied in the realm of serious games development, and contrasts the results with challenges and problems expressed by a panel of developers and researchers in serious games and gamification to identify research gaps. Our findings indicate a lack of research on the actual usage situations of serious games. It seems that the phase of organizational deployment and use is most often overseen. Furthermore, we identified a lack of client/customer perspective in most research on the development of gamified solutions.