The M-SG framework: A framework for Multiplayer Cooperative Serious Game development

Abstract

Designers and developers have to consider many factors when creating Serious Games (SGs), including entertainment and education. After playing games, SGs aim to improve players' or learners' skills (s). In a pedagogical sense, SGs should teach players/participants. SGs should entertain players throughout the game. Thus, SGs must motivate players. Developers must analyze functional demands to select game elements for learning objectives. Developers should also consider non-functional factors like delight and entertainment to promote long-term user engagement. Another issue is that SGs are tailored to learning objectives, which makes recreating and reusing their output difficult and costly. Multiplayer cooperative SG development needs additional work. First, the gameplay must meet conventional multiplayer game needs like player participation and interaction and SG design restrictions like learning content, flexibility, and personalization. Second, players collaborate to achieve a goal in cooperative games. Design must consider both. The developers must consider embedded instructional content, mechanics that engage many players, and mechanics that encourage cooperation throughout the game. Existing research and methods are suggested to solve the challenges of building serious games. However, due to the necessity to address the remaining gaps in usability and utility, only a few of these methods were implemented in actual projects.The main goal of this research is to investigate systematic ways to develop multiplayer cooperative SGs. This thesis aims to develop a systematic method for decreasing the effort required to develop SGs while retaining the game's entertaining and educational purposes.It presents the findings of an investigation on the effects of game elements on player experience in multiplayer cooperative entertainment and serious games. The lessons learned from producing cooperative serious games, as well as the results of user research conducted for developing "The M-SG framework," a framework to support multiplayer cooperative serious games. To fulfill the primary purpose of this thesis, a user evaluation of the framework was conducted. The results indicate that the M-SG framework can benefit the research of multiplayer cooperative serious games and improve the reuse of games from previous projects by modifying the games' premises. These findings show the value of the M-SG framework as a tool for supporting the development of cooperative serious games.