topical media & game development
PDF
Let's be serious -- ICT is not a (simple) game
A. Eliëns
T. Chang
paper
abstract
In this paper we will discuss the requirements for introducing a (serious) game
as a tool for training skills in the area of application and business
information service management.
We introduce a reference model for (serious) games, that serves as a touchstone
to determine the effectiveness of service management games, and we will indicate
the architectural requirements that must be met to satisfy these criteria.
Technical and artistic issues in developing effective service management games
will also be discussed, as to provide clear guidelines how to approach the
production of service management games.
Keywords and phrases: business processes, ICT service management, ASL, BiSL, simulation, serious games
INTRODUCTION
There is a growing need for ICT service management which provides ICT
service providers with the basic functionalities to manage complex
information systems. Since the early 1990’s the world of ICT
infrastructure has been in a state of constant flux due to profound
changes in field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The
complex interplay between technological innovation and the
rearrangements of applications, service oriented architectures, and
enterprise integration has led to new service management operations.
At Getronics PinkRoccade, a leading company which acts as a service provider
to many large institutions in the Netherlands, we are developing
an integrated role playing and simulation environment for ICT service management.
The adoption of serious game technology is motivated by the observation
that with regard to the complexity of the tasks involved in service management,
which also includes extensive communication with clients,
traditional methods of instruction and learning are not adequate.
Following Huizinga's dictum
that in the game we confront a function of the
living creature which cannot be determined either biologically or logically,
we regard games an an effective learning environment.
From a game theory perspective, which we will discuss later,
a game not only provides the learner with an environment to learn the rules,
but also allows us to re-create to some extent the context that promotes
an actual involvement of the player with the world in which to apply these rules.
The structure of this paper is as follows.
First, we will provide a brief overview of application and business information
service management at Getronics PinkRoccade.
Then, we will further motivate the use of serious games, and provide
a reference model for (serious) games.
After that, we will make a first attempt to identify the criteria
for effective service management games,
and we will outline architectural requirements for such games.
Finally we will discuss some technical and artistic issues in game development
after which we will draw our conclusions.
ICT SERVICE MANAGEMENT
ICT infrastructure facilitates the provision of services and
information. The success or failure in the application management as well
as functional management depends on whether the actors in the value chain
are able to provide better ICT services as required by the end users.
However, the provision of new and better services is a complicated
process, because it requires co-ordinated actions between many players.
In the field of outsourcing, for example, the management of expectations
of the client users and the ICT provider users are not only dependent on
a service level agreement but also of the changing perspectives, roles
and interests. Failures could have major consequences for both parties.
ASL stands for Application Services Library, and is a method for the
performance of application management in the broadest sense of the term
independently of any supplier, [Pols and Meijer-Veldman (2006)]. It is an extrapolation of and a
supplement to ITIL for the purposes of application management. Not only
does ASL offer a cognitive approach, framework and conceptual context
but also best practices for the purposes of practical implementation. It
is intended to make it simpler for applications to provide optimum
support for business processes throughout the entire life cycle of the
latter.
BiSL stands for Business Information Services Library and constitutes a
method for the performance of functional management in the broadest
sense of the word independent of any supplier, which is to say, anything
from operational duties, such as support for users and handover tests,
to strategic information management.
At Getronics PinkRoccade, ASL and BiSL are instruments
in determining ICT strategies in cooperation with clients.
The integrated gaming and simulation environment we are developing is meant
to train our employees in the use of ASL and BiSL.
In developing this application we draw on our experience
in business process simulation, [Eliens et al. (1996)], and visualisation, [Schonhage et al. (2000)].
A REFERENCE MODEL
There are many resources on serious games.
To indicate what it is all about, we present a quote from
virtual heroes:
virtual heroes
Serious games and simulations are poised for a second revolution.
Today's children, our workforce and scientists are increasingly playing,
learning, and inventing in visually intensive "virtual" environments.
In our increasingly experiential economy, immersive educational and
training solutions are needed to advance the workforce of tomorrow.
Game-based learning and technologies meet this challenge.
However, regardless of the fuss being made, apart from the euphorics their is little
attention to determine in a more scientific way what the actual value
of the game is in the learning process, and what elements or aspects of the game
contribute to the learning experience.
To provide such a foundation, we propose to adopt a modified version
of the classic game model introduced in [Juul (2005)].
According to [Juul (2005)],
the defining characteristics of a game can be expressed by making explicit
the rules of the game, the outcome of the actions of the
player, the value attached to these outcomes and the effort
required of the player to obtain these values.
In addition, the model proposed in [Juul (2005)] adresses why a player
develops an attachment with the game and what might be the
possible consequences of playing the game in relation to the real
world, for example making friends in an online role playing game or become
famous in a game contest.
As an illustration of how to use the model to evaluate a game, consider
for example that with respect to the effort required of the player, games
may be very different in what skills the player needs to have to obtain
the desired outcomes, dependent on the type of game,
that is whether it is a role playing game, a strategy game, or a first person shooter
primarily focussed on the perceptual-motoric skills of the player.
To what extent the story underlying a game is important is not only
dependent on the type of game, but also on the technology used to realize the game.
Whether we want our trainees in service management to be virtual heroes
of the immersive kind is yet to be seen.
EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT GAMES
As a first attempt to formulate criteria for effective service management games,
we give a characterization in terms of the reference game model,
introduced in the previous section, as outlined below:
criteria for effective games
- rules -- service management protocols
- outcome -- learning process
- value -- intellectual satisfaction
- effort -- study procedures
- attachment -- corporate identity
- consequences -- job qualification
There is no need to emphasize that this is only a first approximation, and for that
matter a rough one.
What we must keep in mind, however, is that the model is not only applicable on a
macro-level, to characterize an entire game, but more importantly may also
be applied on a micro-level, to establish the criteria for each (relevant) step
in the game play.
For service management games, we wish to add
two more criteria to the model, namely scenarios
and reward, dealing with the (serious) content of the game:
service management game(s)
- scenarios - problem solving service management
- reward - service level agreement
Currently, there already is a great offer of business management games.
For example, when googling on game, business, and management,
we find, among many other offerings games to
train leadership
(which provides urgent problem situations in a variety of areas,
including military and health care applications), and
entrepreneurship
(which provides a eight round cycle of sessions instruction how
to start a business, get clients, etc., with extensive feedback in the form of
reports and comments after each round).
A general observation we may make here is that the games we have seen so far primarily focus
on functionality and offer at best an efficient interface, which we do
not find very appealing from a more artistic perspective.
GAME ARCHITECTURE
As observed in [Van Houten and Verbraeck (2006)], the defining characteristic of management games,
from an architectural perspective, is the need to combine
the so-called game loop, which propagates actions of the player into the game state,
with what is known as the simulation loop,
which determines what events occur, and schedules future events based
on a simulation model.
For the game play, we need to develop, or use, some sort
of game engine,
which following [Sherrod (2006)] may be regarded to consist of the following
functional components:
game engine
- rendering system -- 2D/3D graphics
- input system -- user interaction
- sound system -- ambient and re-active
- physics system -- for the blockbusters
- animation system -- motion of objects and characters
- artificial intelligence system -- for real challenge(s)
The level of sophistication of each of these components may vary,
dependent on whether we want, for example, to introduce compelling visual effects.
Other requirements are set by the possible need to offer the game
online, as a multi-user game, and possibly with extra facilities such
as chatting and instant messaging.
Finally, we must consider that not only the game engine is important,
but perhaps even more so, the game programming, that is the
computional means to define the rules of the game, and the (visual) outcome
of player actions. [Van Houten and Verbraeck (2006)] introduce a rule-based formalism for game programming,
where our own preference would be a combination of
simulation and
embedded logic
extending an existing game engine such as
Delta3D,
or in a more lightweigth fashion based on our
intelligent multimedia platform, described in [Eliens et al. (2002)].
GAME DEVELOPMENT
In essence, according to [Schuytema (2007)],
a game is simply a series of processes that takes a player to a result.
However, observing with [Kress and van Leeuwen (1996)] that
games are an increasingly important element in our visual culture,
we must, in developing a game, spent sufficient attention to
the visual appearance and the sensorial aspects of game.
Recently, our group at the VU has been involved in'developing a
climate game
for the Academische Jaarprijs competition.
In the climate game project, we are exploring various technologies,
including interactive video with flash, as well as the use of
the HalfLife2 game engine, with which we gained experience in developing
a promotional game for our faculty, [Eliens and Bhikharie (2006)].
With regard to the use of 3D we may remark that
since ancient times a walk in space has served as a mnemonic device, and as such
spatial memory may aid in retention and understanding, which might also
provide a decisive argument for the use of 3D in a service management game!
CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we have introduced a game model
which served as a reference to discuss the criteria for
effective service management games.
We have observed that the quality of a game
lies both
in the general flow of the game experience and
in the individual moments during a playing session,
which have to be defined both with respect to the (learning) goals
set for the (serious) game, as well as the involvement of the player, that is fun.
Against the background of these criteria we have indicated architectural
requirements as well as technical and artistic issues in the development
of service management games.
REFERENCES
- [Simulate] Eliens A., Niessink F., Schonhage S.P.C.,
- van Ossenbruggen J.R., Nash P. (1996). Support for BPR -- simulation, hypermedia and the Web,
In Proc. Euromedia\'96, Euromedia, London 1996
- [Platform] Eliens A., Huang Z., and Visser C. (2002),
- A platform for Embodied Conversational Agents based on Distributed Logic Programming,
In Proc. Workshop AAMAS'02, Bologna 17/7/2002
- [VULife] Eliens A. and S.V. Bhikharie (2006,
- Game @ VU -- developing a masterclass for high-school students using the Half-Life 2 SDK,
In Proc. GAME'ON-NA'2006
- [HalfReal] Juul J. (2005),
- Half Real -- Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds,
MIT Press
- [Semiotics] Kress G. and van Leeuwen T. (1996),
- Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design,
Routledge
- [Control] Van Houten S-P. and Verbraeck A. (2006),
- Controlling simulation games through rule-based scenarios,
In Proc. Winter Simulation Conference, Perrone L.F., Wieland F.P, Liu J. Lawson B.G., Nico D.M. and Fujimoto R.M. eds.
- [ASL] Pols van der R. and Meijer-Veldman E. (2006),
- ASL, second generation application management,
http://aslfoundation.org
- [Ultimate] Sherrod A. (2006),
- Ultimate Game Programming with DirectX,
Charles River Media
- [Gadgets] Schonhage, B., van Ballegooij, A., Eliens, A. (2000),
- 3D gadgets for business process visualizations,
In Proc. Web3D Symposium, pp. 131-138, Monterey CA, USA
- [GameDesign] Schuytema P. (2007),
- Game Design: A Practical Approach,
Charles River Media
(C) Æliens
27/08/2009
You may not copy or print any of this material without explicit permission of the author or the publisher.
In case of other copyright issues, contact the author.
