Ballyhoo Studios

A Fun Game is not Necessarily a Useful Tool for Learning!

Conversely, a bug-free piece of software, no matter how much important information it may contain, is not necessarily a game. The challenge of creating a good serious game for learning is that if it isn’t compelling, nobody will play it, and if the product doesn’t teach what it needs to teach, it doesn’t matter how much fun the players might have. You have to have both, and the first step to having the right sort of game for learning is having the right people make it for you.

Successful Serious Games:

• Model real-world challenges and environments. "Model" and “simulate" are not the same thing - Sometimes a simple model is more accurate than a very detailed simulations.
• Produce credible real-world results - Sometimes these are unexpected, and sometimes the real world itself defies credibility.
• Help train users to do their jobs better - The primary purpose of any good serious game.
• Can lead to new, more successful methods of operation - The best games identify and solve real-world problems before they appear where they can do real damage.

Unsuccessful Serious Games:
Unsuccessful serious games – of which there have been far too many – share one or more of these characteristics: They:

• Do not meet the needs of the clients.
• Focus on irrelevant areas.
• Focus too much on “fun,” and not enough simulation of reality.
• Focus too much on “simulation,” and may not be compelling to users.

Sometimes this is a successful game whose results have been ignored. One of the most spectacularly unsuccessful serious games of all time was the wargame conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy prior to Midway, in which four of Japan’s best carriers were sunk by American aircraft. The game’s referee, Rear Admiral Ukagi Matome, ruled that this was not possible, and all four carriers reappeared in the game. History, of course, was not quite so kind. This is just one example of how a bad serious game can do more harm than no game at all. Ballyhoo doesn’t make games like this.