Philip Mildner

A serious game for architectural knowledge in the classroom

In this paper we present a serious game on the topic of architecture. The game was developed in association with an architect and is intended to be used in classrooms to deliver architectural knowledge to young students. It focuses on a modular story pattern to allow an easy integration of further game and learning content. With its modern 3D graphical interface it is well suited for illustrating various aspects of architecture.

Design of Serious Games

This chapter covers the topic of creating the design of a serious game. It first presents background information on games in general, and how they create engagement in particular—essential for serious games. The actual design process is similar to designing entertainment games; however, it differs when it comes to integrating the serious content itself. This chapter emphasizes these differences. It also presents solution strategies for how to create serious games. Beginning with an initial game idea, the steps of defining constraints for the game and adding suitable game mechanics are described. Finally, ideas are presented for how to organize the development process in a holistic approach, with a tight coupling of both the gaming and serious aspects.

From Game Characteristics to Effective Learning Games

When developing learning games, emphasis should not only be put on a good integration of the learning content, but also on an engaging game design, in order to create learning tools that both train and motivate. In this paper, we examine the influence of specific game elements to both factors. Therefore, we first analyze models for the characterization of game elements. We then apply an adapted model to the design of a component-based learning game based on a quiz. Various game elements can be added to the game dynamically. This includes, among others, different forms of presentation, challenge, competition and constraints. Using this application we performed a user study to evaluate which game elements are most effective in delivering knowledge as well as in fostering motivation. Results show that a combination of game elements is suited best for influencing both factors positively.

Creation of custom-made serious games with user-generated learning content

Integrating user-generated content into digital games helps to increase re-usability and to decrease development effort. In terms of learning games, the content creation can be extended to the learning parts of the game as well, e.g., allowing teachers to create custom games for their students. In this work, we propose a method of how to create learning games with arbitrary user-generated learning content. This includes not only different topics of learning content, but also different types of knowledge acquisition. To do this we combine a static game scenario with lightweight HTML5-based mini games. Learning content can be conveniently added through a web-based authoring tool that does not require any programming or game design knowledge. In addition to that, we created a game prototype based on the Unity3D engine that uses a tower defence game setting to integrate the learning content. These mini games are retrieved from the backend service at runtime. The implemented solution already allows for the integration of arbitrary content and can easily extended without altering the game client.

Navigating videos by location

The combination of images with geographical information has gained a lot of attention; systems like Google Street View (GSV) have become an integral part of our daily routine and uploading and sharing geotagged images becomes more and more popular. With videos, however, this trend has not started yet. In this paper, we propose a model that combines videos with location data in interactive video tours. An introduced virtual map layer abstracts from single traces to compose one continuous video tour from an arbitrary set of input videos. This allows for an automatic selection of video files with an optimal coverage rate while minimizing transitions between videos. We implemented our model in a web application that enables users to create their own video tours and to freely change both time and location of the video stream.