Model This

Review of Current Serious Games in Project Management

2011-09-23T12:56:00.000-07:00

Finally, here is the third post of the series about a review of the state of the art highly interactive environments in project management. The previous two posts were on definitions and methodology. Here I am presenting my analysis of results.

Role Play

All reviewed games develop a specific story to represent the learning context, usually putting the learners in project manager's position. Some (e.g. Sharkworld, SimulTrain) feature an already started project as part of the story.

Social Play

There seem to emerge several categories within games and simulations employing similar patterns. The group of games that seems to have attracted most commercial attention is a variation of traditional tabletop games that makes use of a common computer-supported dashboard (e.g Synergest's game, G2G3 Polestar, ManSims, Sim Project). Variations make use of spreadsheets to make calculations easier (Family Life), interactive dashboards to share data and even pre-recorded video sequences to enrich the story of the experience (Race-to-Results). These games are essentially workshop-shaped group learning activities, lead by a facilitator that manages both team dynamics and learning content. An advantage of these games is the fact that free conversations are possible between learners or with the facilitator.

Simulations

Another group of simulations takes a more technical approach. These project management simulators put learners in one single role, although many of them are nevertheless intended to be played by small teams. A long-improved classic is TOPSIM, deployed around the world for several decades. Each temporary deployment is customized for the particular context. A number of the other project management simulations are closer to computer-based role-playing games within a simplified virtual environment (e.g. Leadership-in-Action, Harvard's game, CBT module, Contract and Construct, Simulation laboratory). Usually these have also a more expressed game story and some form of virtual characters (Sharkworld, Prendo's games, SimulTrain). Communication with virtual characters is based on predefined multiple-choice dialogues. A somewhat different approach has been taken in vLeader, where interaction is done at the level of speech acts in a conversation (Aldrich 2003). This allows the learners to focus on the illocutionary force of interactions, thus enabling complexity of interaction, while still maintaining relatively simple vocabulary and repertoire.A very-domain focused approach has been developed for the purposes of construction management, a technology called 4D virtual construction. It allows for an actual virtual construction process. It adopts a 3D perspective and tracks the time as a fourth dimension (hence 4D). For the purposes of this review, it is considered along applications that simulate product development and focus on the more technical side of project management.

Interactive Storytelling

The two storytelling applications for training have been developed by the Institute for Creative Technologies – one of the leading institutions in interactive storytelling. They both have been developed for military training purposes and are specific to the field endeavours military leaders need to engage in. One of them, Army Excellence in Leadership (AXL), adopts an interactive case-method teaching that employs pre-reported video sequences. In its video-based approach that provides a much more specific context, AXL is similar to HP's Race-to-Results and Sharkworld. The other one, being currently developed is called Virtual Officer Leadership Trainer (VOLT). It is being delivered within a training room environment. Through interaction with virtual characters, it is intended to deliver practice of communication skills to complement traditional learning methods.

Virtual Worlds

Finally, three virtual worlds have been identified to be reviewed here – SecondLife, Telespace and Sun's MPK20. In their specialization, these three cover the range from general purpose through customizable on demand to dedicated development. All these have been adopted for some form of learning, incl. in the domain of project management. However, in contrast to the previous categories, this software was not developed for the purposes of project management training in particular, thus serving only as infrastructure to facilitators that conduct project management trainings. Subsequently, the use of virtual worlds for training is very diverse. In line with this, various authors focus on the identification of possible uses of the platform for educational purposes, for examples see e.g. (Ryan 2008). Thus virtual worlds actually afford themselves as environments for learning where multiple activities are possible, as opposed to learning tools which are matched to a particular activity.

Methodology for Review of Serious Games in Project Management

2011-09-16T12:27:00.000-07:00

As part of my research on the development of games for learning for management professionals, in August 2010 I reviewed current software developments in games, simulations and other highly-interactive environments. This is the second of three posts on the topic, the first one being about definitions, this one being about methodology, and in the third I will discuss my results.

As a consequence from the review of definitions, four main streams are considered to be of interest. These are the traditional three perspectives towards games, as referred by (Edwards 2001) and (Lindley 2003): games, simulations and interactive narrative, along with the slightly more different perspective of virtual worlds.

Without doubt the most widely adopted approach is the one of simulation games – environments that inherit properties of simulations (e.g. the predominantly realistic game environment) and games (e.g. competition, user-friendliness, etc.). The development of simulation games about project management has followed the wider trend of development in educational games. A number of courses, based on simulation games have gained recognition by e.g. PMI, delivering the most widespread project management certification procedures. One crucial feature of the branche is the two rather disjoint streams of development: one of scholarly development processes and publications; the other – of market- and revenue-driven industry development.

The applications that I have reviewed encompass examples from both that in some way have received a better coverage online. The method used here was to search for “project management” in combination with “game”, “simulation”, “virtual world”, “second life”, “digital storytelling”, “interactive storytelling” subsequently. Then the first 50 entries on both Google Web Search and Google Scholar were reviewed. Scientific publications since 1996 have been investigated in detail. For a discussion of earlier games and simulations, see (Elgood 1997).

The identified products were categorized according to their self-description. The majority of them tends to be described as simulations. One possible reason for this might be a marketing perception bias against games. The investigation resulted in 2 games, 17 simulations, 2 interactive narratives, 3 virtual worlds, where entries that have commonalities (e.g. in cases when two games are variations of the same core) are considered as one. There were 14 more environments that for various reasons didn't meet the predefined conditions, e.g. they didn't have sufficient documentation (StevensTech Capstone Simulation, VOLT), didn't involve computer support; were older than 1996 and no current information was available; or were in some development phase (Adam Montgomery's game, Vivian Valiant).

I do not intend to publish the full list here, because hyperlinks tend to become dysfunctional fairly easy. In the third post on the topic I will comment on and refer to the systems that stood out or were representative.

Review of Definitions of Highly-Interactive Virtual Environments for Learning

2011-09-09T12:21:00.000-07:00

As part of my research towards a PhD degree, in August 2010 I reviewed current games and simulations for project management. Now I am publishing the results here. The review consists of three parts: an overview of definitions (published with this post), the methodology I used for the actual review of games, simulations and other graphical systems (broadly referred to as highly interactive virtual environments) and, finally my comments on the reviewed systems.

Here I discuss distinctions between games, simulations and other platforms. Although research on business simulations and games has a long history and a number of authors have put forward definitions, in literature still very often these are used interchangeably and without consideration of exact terminology. A review of defining efforts has been done e.g. by Sauve and colleagues (2007) and Maier and Größler (2000) and I summarize it this article. One common observation made by various authors (e.g. (Sauvre et al 2007), (Aldrich 2009)) is that each of the aforementioned categories focuses on a particular set of features that are not essential, albeit often present in the other categories.

Sauve and colleagues (2007), among others, have conducted a review of the essential elements of games and have reached a convergence over five distinctive features. These are player or players, conflict, rules, predetermined goal and artificial nature. In the context of educational games, the authors introduce the pedagogical nature of the game as a sixth feature.

In their review, Sauve and colleagues (2007) also summarize some essential attributes of simulations used for learning. They identify four key attributes: a model of reality defined as a system; a dynamic model; a simplified model; and a model that has fidelity, accuracy and validity. Here too, the authors introduce a pedagogical attribute: the simulation should directly address the learning objectives. In a somewhat more unifying perspective, Aldrich (2009) argues that “simulations use rigorously structured scenarios carefully designed to develop specific competencies that can be directly transferred into the real world.”

While games and simulations are generally viewed as distinct technologies as indicated earlier, some systems combine elements of both i.e. typical features of simulations (e.g. a predominantly realistic game environment) with some features games (e.g. competition, user-friendliness, etc.). These technologies are commonly called simulation games.

Further two related categories have been discussed in the literature: interactive storytelling and virtual worlds. Interactive storytelling (sometimes called digital storytelling) is widely claimed to have emerged from games (Mateas 2001), (Crawford 2004). On the other hand, Riedl, Stern and Dini (2006) elaborate on the distinction between simulations and interactive narratives. Interactive storytelling has been contrasted both to games (Crawford 2004) and simulations (Riedl et al. 2006) in its emphasis on a pre-designed story. In the core of a definition of interactive storytelling is the contra-position between interactivity and a predefined plot. Authors in the field (see the previously quoted as examples) develop arguments of possible controlled interactivity that would still maintain the initially intended narrative. When talking about educational technologies, focusing this narrative on the learning material can become a strong learning support technique, as this has been demonstrated by Marsella and colleagues (2000).

In his comparison between games and simulations, Aldrich (2009) also includes virtual worlds as a distinct third category beyond the other commonly considered two. He underlines the absence of a specific goal as a distinctive characteristic of virtual worlds. He also indicates that communication is a much more central feature for virtual worlds, as opposed to the other discussed environments.

It's Just Birds

2011-03-11T14:53:00.000-08:00

Today I've been sent an article about the cognitive complexity of the user experience of Angry Birds. I do appreciate the author's arguments, but to me the success of the game is rather due to outstanding marketing, than to any remarkably good user experience or game design.

Charles Mauro's explanation of how the game manages cognitive load and the connection he makes to the theory of flow are very impressive. However, I'd claim, like with many popular games, this success is based not on ingenuity or any disruptive change, but rather on the history of exploration in computer games and incremental recombination.

Besides being released for the iPhone and being mentioned by David Cameron (and probably a series of such events), Angry Birds doesn't get that much attention from people that have higher awareness of what has been around. And in fact it could be argued that the game is just another artillery game like Scorched Earth was 20 years ago and Worms - 10 years ago. They all have a sense of humour, some gameplay innovation and the typical casual feel. I do love the visual style of multilayered 2D perspective animation. I'd say that it expands on games like Patapon and World of Goo. Of course, there are a bunch of other cool aspects that work well on players, but to me it is difficult to name anything so unique.

As for what calls "mistery", I'd call extremely professional artwork. Much like the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. However, the one aspect of Angry Birds that I admire is the way they have managed to market their game, so they've earned the status of the flagship game for iPhone.

Borut Pfeifer on serious games

2010-04-08T09:13:00.000-07:00

Borut Pfeifer wrote in his blog about the misconceptions caused by the name serious games. He quotes a great sentence by Suzanne Seggerman:

You can’t find Bob Dylan in the serious music section of iTunes.

I am working on a quite big serious game project and couldn't agree more. On the first part: serious games as a term is a non-sense. The fact is that just some people take games more seriously than others, but games themselves are more or less similar.
On the second part, Ian Bogost wrote a whole book in order to explain that argument (although he uses a more appropriate name).
And yet again, the beauty of it all is in the diversity and in the freedom of some people to identify their area of work as serious games.

Jane McGonial on Changing the World with Games

2010-03-31T04:04:00.000-07:00

Talking about communities, social networks and the perception of being able to change things.

See the presentation on Slideshare.

Scrum for game development

2010-03-16T14:36:00.000-07:00

I have shortly used Scrum in my work and loved it. I think agile methodologies nurture creativity. A learning by example book by Henrik Kniberg offers the story of their adoption of Scrum and XP.

Today I just read a very interesting article by Clinton Keith giving insights of the experience of the game industry with Scrum. Sounds right.

On dynamic construction of narrative

2010-01-20T02:03:00.000-08:00

Some time ago I read about structuralist's approach to narrative. Although I am a bit sceptic about how much art forms could be formalized, there is something that Roland Barthes has introduced and I liked very much. It is the distinction between kernel and satellite events in a story. As the name tells, kernel are the ones that must necessarily be in a story and their absence would disrupt it. Whereas satellite events are things that only decorate the main story.

There has been an argument that in role-playing games game masters are responsible for kernel events, and the events generated by players are only satellite.

At the International Conference of Interactive Digital Storytelling 2009 there was a presentation of Thespian. It is a character-driven platform for interactive storytelling developed at the leading Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California. Thespian can be experienced at Mei Si's page, dedicated to the Little Red Riding Hood non-deterministic story.

I was impressed by the generated stories. Maybe one open question remains whether Mei Si's selection of kernel elements is representative for the story, as you have examples, where the story ends just after Wolf eats Granny.

Linear Interactivity

2009-12-28T11:58:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of attention on the issues of interactive media, non-linearity and the new perspectives that these two open. At a workshop at the International Conference of Interactive Digital Storytelling 2009, several examples of successful interactive storytelling applications have been considered. One of these was The Graveyard by Tale of Tales. It was easy to classify it as linear. It uses interactivity just as a means to push the predefined story forward.

I have written about a similar game before. There are many others as well. Today I came across another game of this kind: We The Giants. However We The Giants does bring another interesting aspect beyond linearity and it is user contribution at the end of the game. I like the idea of people sharing reflections at the end. However this game shows that the quality of these statements in not always as good as we want it to be.

I have had a similar idea for the project I've been working on. However the interesting part is what actually happens to the so-generated user content. How are the good statements to be filtered out and reinforced? Maybe a like/dislike voting mechanism? And this part is yet to be found out.

Pointer game

2009-12-28T09:45:00.001-08:00

I have seen this labyrinths that have to be navigated through with the mouse at Alex Frank's dontclick.it. It is essentially the very simple idea that you should move the mouse pointer along a labyrinth without touching the walls.

Today I've stumbled upon a similar white label game that additionally features further game elements, such as moving obstacles and shooting. Not that it brings the game so much further, but it is a good illustration how particular game objects could hugely change the entire gameplay. There's also another game that uses a similar idea, but it introduces complication on the mouse pointer, something they call yoyo ball. I definitely find the first one more interesting.

Reward systems: Jugsaw and RPG

2009-12-02T08:39:00.001-08:00

Chris Bateman draws an interesting comparison, finding some non-trivial similarities in reward systems in jigsaw puzzles and computer role-playing games.

Role-playing Games

2009-11-25T08:39:00.000-08:00

Many people tend to ignore the legacy we have from classical role-playing games when they talk about games and entertainment. Video games are cool and maybe more profitable, but there's much to be learnt from other genres.

A perfect example of this is the GNS Theory. It builds up a pretty good argument in the story vs simulation argument I've referred to before, but as the name suggests it does define it threefold: gamism, narrativism and simulationism. I think it pretty neatly could be transfered to computer games. And I do like the idea that Ron Edwards makes the point that there rarely will be a pure example of any of these.

Analysis of Gamebooks

2009-11-19T08:37:00.000-08:00

Gamebooks are one of the early recent trends towards non-linearity. Seemingly everywhere around the world their markets have followed a similar pattern that resembles a bubble that dies after its burst.

Still they are an example of hypertext before the birth of WWW.

Chris Lewis from Expressive Intelligence Studio brought this great analysis of a series of gamebooks and their evolution in time. It is worth seeing, not only because of its outstanding visualisation.

One more voice for play instead of teach

2009-11-19T07:29:00.000-08:00

Apparently experiments with rats show that the poor creatures that are denied access to playful activities, fail to develop their character. Such impaired rats are claimed to have "cognitive problems, emotional problems and they're socially incompetent," and moreover they appear to "become bad lovers".

This is an interesting update from the Wonderland Blog.

Actually similar claims have been made many times before, notably by Chris Crawford in his Art of Computer Game Design.

The Value of Story

2009-11-10T07:15:00.000-08:00

Below I've quoted the culmination of a great article about the added value story/context provide.

...During the Q&A at DSU, Richard Dansky told a story about some dialog he wrote for some guards in Far Cry; one guard tells another guard about growing up in New Jersey and going to the beach. Some Far Cry players approached Dansky at a convention and told him that once they overheard that guard’s story, they went out of their way not to kill him when they advanced on his position, because they were from New Jersey, and they had been down to the beach. That guard was one of them, and no way were they going to kill that guy.

I don’t care who you are, you just can’t accomplish that with polygons or pixels, no matter how much you spend on programmers and painters.

Human puzzle

2009-10-24T07:32:00.000-07:00

I got very inspired by a puzzle design I have seen recently by a guy called Boyko Ivanov Taskov. The site features a more detailed pdf booklet for the design.

Games for Learning and Assessment

2009-10-15T07:29:00.000-07:00

Here's a really nice documentary about the role of computer games in contemporary education:

The video is from a quite extensive article on simulations by Marc Prensky, a very respectful author on education with games.

BrainHex player typology test

2009-09-29T07:24:00.000-07:00

Today I've taken the BrainHex player typology test. Interestingly enough it was difficult for me to point three games that would represent my interests. I easily picked Jones in the Fast Lane, but after some thoughts on StarCraft, Pizza Tycoon, Syndicate, World of Goo and War Inc, I picked SimCity and Fallout. The last appeared indicative to my group. Not sure about the others, but they definitely have strong emphasis on simulation. So here are my scores:

Mastermind: 18
Socialiser: 14
Achiever: 11
Conqueror: 10
Seeker: 8
Survivor: 5
Daredevil: 4

The results are not surprising at all.
Still, I am not sure of the quality of the questionnaire and classification, but I have to admit that it is because I am completely inexperienced with the construction of such tests. To put it straight, I'll come back to the classical question: "Are people objective when they answer questions?" An answer could be that only experiments could tell the actual truth.

Raph Koster talks on Discrete Maths in Games

2009-09-20T03:54:00.000-07:00

It was a very pleasant surprise to get to know that Raph Koster has held a talk on mathematics behind games at GDC Austin. I've long have had great respect for Raph's work and thoughts, but I wouldn't have expected someone with a background in creative writing to be going that deep in graph theory. I guess I underestimated him.

The reduction that he makes to show that behind the sensitively appealing hull, games are actually formal systems, is a point he has already made. It is also coherent with my understanding (thus the name of this blog).

I am not sure if Raph went that much further, but since he mentions NP-completeness, I'd add that NP-complete problems are actually interesting to the human brain, because they cannot be "gamed" (in Raph's terminology, as in his theory of fun).

One other interesting topic is what kind of mathematics is actually appealing to people. I guess there is no single answer to that, but definitely discrete sets, with preferably manageable sizes are something that the human mind can conveniently handle. To me this is an endless topic, but now I'd just like to refer to a cultural difference I've noticed during my education. While in Germany at university you will be taught how to reduce new problems to ones that have been already solved (optimization), in Bulgaria (and possibly in other post-communist countries in East Europe) people actually explore creative ways to tackle each particular problem (combinatorics). One example of this could be given with 3D geometry. Whereas in Germany e.g. volume would be calculated with multiple integration, in Bulgaria a subject called stereometry exists.

Coming up: A game about an Iranian family

2009-09-17T07:26:00.000-07:00

The Unconcerned is a new example of a mature idea: turning games from entertainment to informative media. Do you know how it feels to be roaming around through the raving crowd to look for your daughter.

I have great respect for people like Borut Pfeifer who leave their cozy workplaces at big companies to do something that makes a difference. Even if this means collecting charities. I am happy to have supported that pledge.

First Lecture on Game Design

2009-09-08T23:52:00.000-07:00

Within TOSMI, I made a presentation on game design. It was targeted towards artists that were learning how to make games with Blender. We also wanted to pull them away from the desire to chase photorealism. All this appeared to be an interesting challenge, because of the limitations on what an artist could do to the Blender game engine and the fact that we wanted to stay away from plain modding and actually make them think about gameplay.

I am not entirely happy with the presentation, but it turned out to be a pretty good talk. So here are the slides (I'm too lazy to actually turn them into a slidecast):

Various Topics on Game Design

View more documents from Martin Ruskov.

The importance of concept details

2009-09-08T23:45:00.000-07:00

In a nice metaphor Jason Rice makes a good point how details in game levels can combine to show a bigger picture. At least this is how I read his article.

Futurelab call for ideas

2009-09-07T03:47:00.000-07:00

Futurelab announces a call for ideas: Games for Learning.

Sounds like a good opportunity for independent game designers.

Will Wright on TED

2009-08-18T02:09:00.000-07:00

no comment

Story vs. Game

2009-07-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

A while ago I was interested in an unheld workshop on Simulation vs. Stories. Today I stumbled upon this article by Greg Costikyan: Story vs. Game. I was surprised to notice the extent to which I disagree with almost any single paragraph in the text.

I do agree that there is a continuum between stories and games (actually I am not sure he uses the word "game" as I would). Because to me this continuum is exactly as in the mentioned workshop. The thing Greg talks about is simulations. And to me games are much more what Raph Koster would say: just "fun".

To me storytelling is part of games. The best way to convey this idea is to think of the story post-factum, after the play. If you retell it, it is a story. The difference is that in this case you deal with what they call "emergent narrative".

Games for social awareness

2009-07-24T06:38:00.000-07:00

Today I've stumbled upon an article, titled Best Practices for Integrating Game-Based Learning into Online Teaching, written by Rudy McDaniel and Peter Telep and published in Journal of Online Learning and Teaching. It refers to some game examples, I'm inclined to discuss whether these games are exactly examples of learning games. I'd rather tag them as social awareness games, which would be some form of persuasive games. Don't want to focus on wording, as learning is still a proper description, but maybe these examples are not extensive enough for me.

Anyway, here's part of the list of games, referred in the article:

CyberCIEGE (download)

Dafur is Dying

Food Force (download)

Global Conflict: Palestine (has a sequel Global Conflict: Latin America)

Planet Green Game

Fantastic Contraption

Simport (commercial)

Legsim

Hazmat: Hot Zone (commercial)

In this context it might be interesting to see my persuasive game: ko64eto, which advocates for garbage separation in Bulgaria.

I could add to the list:

BBC Climate Challenge

Stop Disasters

VirtualU (download)

BTW persuasive games are ones that in my mind necessarily need to be easily accessible. Otherwise there is no incentive for people to confront with them, esp. if they don't use mainstream platforms, such as Windows. One common way to achieve accessibility is to design and develop the games for a browser. Maybe you've noticed it yourself by not trying the games that need downloading.

Serious games get into Educational Curricula

2009-07-23T04:06:00.000-07:00

At Florida Virtual School they have started developing a game-based curriculum for a course. Read more at the disrupting class blog.

A great example of a persuasive game

2009-07-02T07:49:00.000-07:00

A nice illustration how games could be a very successful media, much more persuasive than traditional media.
http://spritarikatite.newpromo.net/ (name translates to something like "stop the dodgers").
This is a game about Bulgarian parliamentary elections. The goal is to stop sheep-minded people to become members of parliament. Thugs are driving and protecting them, whereas somewhere in between also normal candidates show up. A simple and realistic message, conveyed in the classical duck hunt game design shell.

Raph Koster at a roundtable

2009-06-24T04:54:00.000-07:00

I recently read A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster and was very impressed the explanations he uses. Just to illustrate, I'm posting a quote from its prologue:

My grandfather wanted to know whether I felt proud of what I do. It seemed a reasonable question: there he was, aging and soon to pass away, though at the time I didn't know that; a man who had spent his life as a fire chief, raising six children. One of them followed in his footsteps, became a fire chief himself, and now sells bathtub linings. There's a special education teacher, an architect, a carpenter. Good, solid wholesome professions for good, solid wholesome people. And there I was--making games, rather than contributing to society.

I told him that I felt I did contribute. Games aren't just a diversion; they're something valuable and important. And my evidence was right in front of me--my kids, playing tic-tac-toe on the floor.

Watching my kids play and learn through playing had been a revelation for me. Even though my profession was making games, I often felt lost in the complexities of making large modern entertainment products, rather than understanding why games are fun and what fun is.

My kids were leading me, without my quite knowing it, towards a theory of fun. And so I told my grandfather, "Yes, this is something worthwhile. I connect people, and I teach people." But as I said it, I didn't really have any evidence to offer.

Here is a video cast from a roundtable he took part in.

You have to burn down the rope

2009-06-24T03:36:00.000-07:00

From the article in my previous post, I've found this great story. It's not something attractive by itself, but it has great storytelling value. Make sure to listen to the song at the end.

Innovative Casual Games

2009-06-24T02:12:00.000-07:00

Gamasutra released another great article: Innovative Casual Game Design: A Year in Review.

To me casual games are much more interesting as a communication than as an entertainment phenomenon.

A Blog on Game Design

2009-06-24T02:08:00.000-07:00

Since quite a long time, I've been thinking to start writing on games - all of them, any of them. This would be my first public blog in English, but it's also most related to my personal and professional interests, so has quite a different purpose from any of my Bulgarian blogs.

I finally got to it. Hope you like it!