Serious Games

Humanities and Heritage comprehend all the disciplines dealing with  Manhood: its history, language, art, behaviour, societal structure, belief, including its environment. In other peakgenius.com fun games words, Humanities and Heritage (H&H) are all what concerns Man (as an individual or a society) and his existence in space and time.

Unfortunately, in these critical times for the global economy, governments pay less and less attention to culture. “You can’t eat culture” said the former Italian ministry of economy commenting the public funding reduction to the cultural sector. L Thus ICTs (and serious games in particular) provide powerful (and relatively cheap) tools to build cultural heritage applications enabling a better understanding and appreciation of our present and past, supporting the preservation, reproduction, representation and fruition of artefacts, sites and intangible goods. The majority of serious games in the field of H&H address the general public and have the great ambition of raising the awareness and the love for llhtnbşklhyktr culture.

There has long been a discussion as to make whether adding ‘fun’ assists learners’ engagement and retention. Traditionally, games are not considered ‘serious’ by some business actors, because business is business and whenever money is involved, or competition is at stake, there is no perceived room for ‘funny’ playgrounds. In competitive contexts you have winners and losers: and this is an extremely serious concern. That’s why business games have been more comfortably Buy Google Plus Ones called “Simulations”. Not only the games which model economic environments, but every kind of game designed for lida addressing  Business & Management (B&M) topics, including the ones addressing soft skills, such as collaboration or leadership etc (2). Now that this taboo is (slowly) fading thanks to the increasing use of Serious Games in general, another one, exactly the opposite one, is arising, that is, fun is a must-to-be component for any Serious Game(1), B&M ones included.

Some games lack the competitive aspect that is often supposed to be an essential feature of gaming (1). In fact, some games are expressly designed not to reach a winning final state. A classic reported example is SimCity which, in the words of Costikyan, "has no inherent 'winstate,' no explicit, built-in goal for the game. SimCity works because it allows players to choose their own goal, and supports a wide variety of possible goals" (2). Nevertheless, the possibility of being re-elected mayor could indeed represent a winstate for SimCity. Typical examples are given by MUDs and MOOs, where players are encouraged to motivate themselves towards fx15 a goal of their own (3) but also by some virtual worlds as like as Second Life which may embed, learning experiences as the ones of Serious Games, but with fuzzy objectives that may vary and that do not necessarily require any competition at all.