What Are The Benefits Of Serious Game Development? Featuring 4 Killer Examples

Serious game development is growing. Military, corporate, education, and health care organizations from around the world are enjoying the positive effects that serious game development have had on their organization’s learning needs. Even though this is a matter of fact, some of them are still not confident about this new eLearning trend. If you still have doubts about serious games efficiency in eLearning, you should keep reading.

The Serious Game Development Benefits

Interactivity. That is the one thing your learners are looking for. Even if digital learning is trending, employees and students seem to be already fed up with this concept. Did you already attend a 2-hour theoretical training, without any interactions? I am sure you did. How was it? Kind of boring, right? Indeed, listening to someone for 2 hours, speaking about a subject you are not passionate about, can be long, very long.

Now, imagine that you attend the same training. But this time, this is different. Interactivity has been added to the course. The trainer starts asking questions. You suddenly can apply your knowledge, and put it into action. As you may already know, knowledge is nothing without action. Fortunately, this is what serious game development is all about. Enabling your learners to interact with the training simulation.

In this article, you are going to discover 4 killer examples of serious game development.

1. Serious Game Development Is Realistic.

Thanks to serious game development, you will not be telling your learners how to do things anymore. Instead, you will be directly showing them. This point is very important, because this is the first reason why serious games bring better results than classical eLearning modules.

To do so, you have to use graphical environments in your serious games. Make it feel real. Otherwise, you lose information retention, as well as engagement from your learners. Setup environments similar to their daily situations. Are they working in an office? Use an office environment then. Are they working in a factory ? Enable your learners to evolve in this environment. The same applies for characters. Does your employees interact with the same kind of people every day? Use such characters. In a nutshell, it is crucial that you use settings related to the daily life of your learners during your serious game development.

Now, this is our turn. Here is a practical example of graphical environments you could use into your training simulations:

You could also use these characters:

Do not worry about the technical  part. You do not have to design any of these settings, as authoring tools, such as the serious games authoring tool ITyStudio, provide you with ready-made libraries of content, both in 2D and 3D.

2. Serious Game Development Is Cost Effective.

Training your employees is important. Customers have highest expectations regarding the quality of the service provided by companies. Besides, you and your co workers do not have enough time to deal with unskilled people anymore. On top of that, we are facing huge changes in our current society. Consumers behaviors are constantly evolving. Business tools are moving fast as well, thanks to the expansion of new technologies.

Given all of these changes, workers can get left behind pretty quickly, if you do not train them properly. Classroom training, when you think about it, costs a lot of money. A lot of different settings enter into account, such as the trainer, travel costs, and a lot more. That is when serious game development comes into play. All you have to do is a one time commitment, to create your training simulation, and then you are good to go. No more travels, no more trainers, no more hotels… Both employers and employees are satisfied, because it will save them time, energy, and money.

Of course, serious game development can be wide. From off the shelf modules to tailored serious game development, costs and commitment can change drastically. That being said, if you are on a budget, and have a tight deadline to hold, we do have a recommendation. Use a serious games authoring tool. This way, you will be able to do your serious game development yourself, reducing the costs and enhancing your flexibility.

Once again, when it comes to this kind of tools, do not worry about the technical stuff. That is true that all authoring tools are not equal. Some are easy to use but basic. Some allow you to design in depth training modules but are complicated. Nevertheless, we do recommend ITyStudio, which is great because you can setup great eLearning content, quickly and easily. You will find below some screenshots of the software.

Drag and drop branching scenarios, to create awesome storytelling easily:

Axes analysis, to setup your pedagogical structure within seconds:

Please note that ITyStudio has way more features to offer.

3. Serious Game Development Is Engaging.

In addition to the previous benefits, serious game development embrace a very important aspect: Interactivity. As discussed at the beginning of this article, knowledge is nothing without action. The point is, when learners attend a classical eLearning module, they cannot take action. Sometimes there might be quizzes inserted in the module, but nothing more. Consequently, employees are less likely to engage, because they are not able to express themselves, and to become actors of the training. However, with serious game development, it is a whole new story. You can give your learners the opportunity to interact with the training simulation. You can put them in front of choices. Related to the answer they chose, the environment will change as well. This aspect of serious game development is really helpful when doing behavioral simulations.

You will find below a video showing how to make learners interact with their environments, using the serious games authoring tool ITyStudio as an example:

https://youtu.be/_NpUEOBjWTM?list=PLaiMQv-L3NbwiZ_GhoKQBus0ev_Nlst_q

With serious games, learners are not attendees anymore: they become actors of the training. This phenomenon will lead to more engagement, thus more results.

4. Serious Game Development Is Accountable.

Last but not least: Accountability. With classical training methods, it is hard to make things accountable. During classroom trainings, you only have two options to assess your learners’ progress:

• Check if they are listening to the course.
• Insert a quiz at the end of the training.

Kind of poor, right? These are no solid metrics to measure the Return On Investment (ROI) of the training. When it comes to serious game development, it is easier. Thanks to your Learning Management System platform, you are able to see who is training on the module and who is not. Moreover, you have access to a lot of priceless information, such as:

• How many time did the learners train.
• How well learners are performing.
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of learners?

Indeed, in order to analyse this kind of data, first you will have to export your serious game into the right format for your Learning Management System platform.

You can do so quickly and easily with ITyStudio.

Now, It Is Time To Take Action: Create Your First Serious Game For Free!

Hopefully, this article gave you an insight on how to do serious game development on your own. As stated previously, we highly encourage you to get an authoring tool. Even if there are several softwares on the market place, ITyStudio is our recommendation. With all its ready-made content, it is simple, quick, and your learners will love its interactivity.

Moreover, you will see that your pedagogical results will be better as well.

Ready to go to the next level? Give it a try!

Start your 30-day trial here!