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.
After several discussions on the topic, I'd clarify the following:
ReplyDeleteAccording to most definitions, serious games are those that have been designed with a serious intention.
However, this does not necessarily have implications on their applicability and use. As many game designers have pointed out, there are a number of games that were designed for fun, but have successfully addressed very serious topics and have left a footprint of the way of thinking of people that have played them.