Evaluation of Serious Games

Abstract

Comprehensive evaluation studies are necessary to “prove” the benefit of Serious Games (SG). This is also extremely important for the commercial success of SG: Best practice examples with profound, well-recorded positive effects will provide relevant arguments to invest into SG for training/education, sports and health, and other application domains. On the other hand, it is not easy to prove the benefit of SG and to measure its effects (e.g. learning effects or medical effects) and affects (user experience factors such as fun during play). Evaluation methodologies might be split into observation, self-evaluation (e.g. questionnaires, interviews), associative methods, performance analyses, and psychophysiology measurement. Technology-enhanced evaluation methods, for instance, facing expression measurement are in the centre of attention. This chapter provides an overview of these methods and describes current interdisciplinary research and technology development achievements in that field.

Games for Training, Education, Health and Sports

“…The reliability of the UXQ has been shown before by evaluations in cognitive psychology with other game prototypes [GöGH13]. In summary, the UXQ measures 17 aspects with 3 items each to calculate from overall 51 items scores for the User Experience with the game and an overall User Experience score.…”

The pupil response as an indicator of user experience in a digital exercise game

“…To measure the user experience caused by the three different game versions (gaming, observed game, no‐game), a questionnaire developed by the authors (Göbel, Gutjahr, & Hardy, ) was used (see Appendix). The questionnaire consists of 21 items building an overall user experience score and is subdivided into seven subscales, each consisting of three of the 21 items.…”