Design and establishment of a pre-development serious games validation framework

The primary goal of this thesis is to design and establish a pre-development validation frameworkin the knowledge domain of serious games (SG). SG are specially designed video gamesystems with a primary purpose other than entertainment. Existing SG frameworks haveneglected to account for a detailed...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Tan, Chin Ike
Format: thesis
Language:eng
Published: 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ir.upsi.edu.my/detailsg.php?det=6703
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Summary:The primary goal of this thesis is to design and establish a pre-development validation frameworkin the knowledge domain of serious games (SG). SG are specially designed video gamesystems with a primary purpose other than entertainment. Existing SG frameworks haveneglected to account for a detailed method and relationship between the game designelements and its process. Hence, the SG Community is currently still lacking comprehensivebest practices for SG design in the pre-development stage. To achieve the researchobjectives, a mixed methods research design was implemented, consisting of exploratory,confirmatory, and explanatory phases. The exploratory and explanatory phases utilized a series ofsemi- structured interviews with six prominent game design practitioners using a SG designtheoretical framework. The SG Design theoretical framework is intended to test the areas of gamedesign and its contribution to an immersive and engaging SG. 30 hypothetical propositionswere generated based on the exploratory phase findings and were used to develop a quantitativeresearch instrument. 145 game designers participated in the confirmatory stage to affirm orrefute the results of the exploratory stage. The explanatory phase was conducted to seek anin-depth understanding of the results in the explanatory and confirmatory phases. The findingsindicated ten core game design elements consisting of user experience, energy, tension, focus,creativity, core mechanics, game goals, outcomes, feedback and game rules arranged in aprocedural manner. In conclusion, video games and serious games share a similar game design processand the ten core elements indicated in the findings formed three distinct layers signifying thatprocess flow resulting in the Rules of Immersion and Player Emotion Game Design Model forSG. The implication of this research suggests that this model can serve as a guiding principleframework for game designers to useeliminary stages of SG development.