Revisiting the Serious Game Classification and Definition

Abstract

In the field of heritage mediation, games are increasingly explored as tools to communicate knowledge, engage audiences, and support learning about cultural heritage. Before exploring their potential in this field, it is worth analysing them and their possibilities. In fact, they have always been used to share knowledge, develop skills, etc. However, it is only recently that we really started talking about them and understood their true potential, whether in schools, museums, or elsewhere. These games can be called Serious Games (SG), although this term is controversial. Indeed, this term implies that games are not ‘serious’ by nature, but rather ‘playful’. Thus, in this paper, we aim to situate SG within the theoretical framework of gaming/playing (what is a game or a play, and what impact these definitions can have on SG?). We then seek to understand their meaning (what makes them a SG?); origins (how did they appear and what kind of medium were they associated with?); variations (how can we classify the sub-genre of SG?); objectives; target audiences; and areas of application. New concepts linked to SG have also emerged (ludification, gamification and ludicisation). We establish whether or not the term SG become obsolete compared to these other concepts. Then, we highlight the contributions and limitations that SG can bring compared to ‘traditional’ tools used to achieve the same objectives (e.g. ex cathedra courses, traditional physical training, and so on). This analyse of effectiveness focuses solely on motivation (one of the most important factors), even though many other components can contribute to it. Thus, without imposing a definition of SG, we will provide an overview of the existing literature, adding our own comments and observations. Finally, this allows us to refine a previous model designed to classify SG by adding the period, the medium used and the type of motivation.