Have we finally found a term for "applying board game mechanics?"!
I was "reading" on a German game Web site, spielegilde.org, and out of the cloud a term appeared.
"Serious Games"
It struck a chord, and I struck it back by doing a little research of my own.
Wikipedia describes a serious game as any game that is "designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment." Sounds like Pinebars to me. Here at the blog we seek to highlight as many different applications of board games as possible to everyday life, whether teaching or management or amazon farmers.
Dig a little deeper.
Seriousgames.org, a Web site I Googled, listed their objective as to find "uses for games in exploring management and leadership challenges facing the public sector." Seriousgames.org focuses on the application of video games, which seems to be the general focus of groups interested in serious games.
Apparently there is a Serious Games Summit (this year its held in San Fransisco) to discuss the development of serious games and related issues. I encourage you to check out their Web site.
Although focused on video games, aspects are inclusive to all gaming types. According to the Serious Games Summit Web site, the second major point of discussion at the summit will be "gamification," which is "[the] debatable term and sometimes questionable process of building game-like incentives into non-game applications, to address issues like productivity, health, marketing, and so forth."
Board game mechanics should not be left out of a discussion about gamification. Rather the incentives built into board games are probably stronger and more suited to gamification than video game mechanics. After all, board games mechanics are developed en lieu of technology and more closely focus on player decisions.
Perhaps all this goes to say is that applying board game mechanics already has an identity in the study of serious games.
Not the most insightful conclusion to a blog post I'm sure...though I hope not the most vapid either.
-Dennis
Posts
The Serious Games Initiative (seriousgames.org) has an interesting premise, but did you notice that the last posting was two years ago?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'm still a boardgamer at heart, and a recreational one at that. I like the idea of games extending their applications beyond entertainment; it's just that I'm still in the space that says the purpose of a game is to have fun.
Thanks for the comment Paul! I did notice that the last post was two years ago, which was a bit of a disappointment.
ReplyDeleteThe summit, however, at gdconf.com still does seem to be alive and well. It will be held in Feb-Mar of 2011.
Yes, I agree!
ReplyDeleteI've been attending some of the serious games conferences and trying to raise awareness of board games amongst game scholars.
I've been invited to be at MIT next academic year on a sabbatical, and my main project will be to create a board game toolkit to enable kids to create educational board games, with the goal of learning more about the topic. I've been writing grant proposals all semester to try and get funding for the project.
I think there is a lot of power in the board games we play to teach as well as inform. You might want to check out the book "Libraries Got Game," which is about how school libraries use recreational board games to support curricular topics.
You can keep up with what I'm up to along these lines at http://gamelab.syr.edu