[Paper Review] Towards Industrialized Conception and Production of Serious Games

Iza Marfisi-Schottman, Aymen Sghaier+3 more|ArXiv.org|Nov 22, 2009

Digital Games and MediaSocial Sciences10 references16 citations

TL;DR

This paper proposes a structured production chain model for serious games (SGs) that integrates educational effectiveness and entertainment value while ensuring economic viability. By defining clear roles, tools, and documentation across sequential stages—from conception to deployment—the framework enables industrial-scale development of SGs certified for both learning outcomes and user engagement.

ABSTRACT

Serious Games (SGs) have experienced a tremendous outburst these last years. Video game companies have been producing fun, user-friendly SGs, but their educational value has yet to be proven. Meanwhile, cognition research scientist have been developing SGs in such a way as to guarantee an educational gain, but the fun and attractive characteristics featured often would not meet the public's expectations. The ideal SG must combine these two aspects while still being economically viable. In this article, we propose a production chain model to efficiently conceive and produce SGs that are certified for their educational gain and fun qualities. Each step of this chain will be described along with the human actors, the tools and the documents that intervene.

Motivation & Objective

• Address the gap between educationally effective serious games and commercially engaging video games.
• Overcome the challenge of balancing pedagogical rigor with user enjoyment in SG development.
• Develop a scalable, industrialized process for conceiving and producing serious games.
• Ensure economic viability of serious games through standardized, repeatable production workflows.
• Certify serious games for both educational gain and fun qualities using a structured methodology.

Proposed method

• Design a multi-stage production chain model for serious games, from conception to deployment.
• Define specific roles for human actors at each stage, including educators, game designers, and cognitive scientists.
• Integrate tools and documentation at each phase to ensure traceability and quality control.
• Embed educational certification processes to validate learning outcomes at predefined milestones.
• Incorporate user experience testing and fun quality assessment to meet player expectations.
• Use iterative feedback loops between educational and entertainment design teams to balance both objectives.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How can serious games be systematically developed to ensure both educational effectiveness and entertainment value?
• RQ2 What production model enables scalable, repeatable, and economically viable development of serious games?
• RQ3 How can educational gains and fun qualities be certified within a standardized production process?
• RQ4 What roles, tools, and documentation are essential for industrializing serious game production?
• RQ5 How can interdisciplinary collaboration between educators and game developers be effectively structured?

Key findings

• The proposed production chain model enables systematic, repeatable, and scalable development of serious games.
• Certification of educational gain and fun quality is feasible through structured, phase-gated processes.
• Clear role definitions and standardized documentation improve collaboration between educational and game development teams.
• The model supports economic viability by reducing development risks and increasing reusability of components.
• Iterative testing and feedback loops enhance both pedagogical effectiveness and user engagement.
• The framework provides a foundation for industrializing serious game production, bridging the gap between research and market-ready products.