Serious games, Serious effects
Serious games are an effective way to explore difficult subjects. They encourage you to reflect on your
behaviour. At Fresh Game Studio, we build serious games about complex matters. We, for example, make
people think about their role in sustainability, inclusion or customer due diligence. We make you stand
out from the crowd to prospective hires. We make your onboarding program one that people will never
forget.
But how do we know these claims are correct? How do we know our games are effective? The answer is
simple: by thoroughly testing everything we do. After reading this article, you will know how we would go
about building an effective game together with you.
Step one: know what you’re measuring
If you are unsure what effect a serious game should have on your organization, you will never know if the
game is effective. That is why we start off every project by defining clear learning goals and effects.
Effects are player behaviours on the main topic after finishing the game.
Learning goals are sets of insights, knowledge or skills acquired through the game. The effects depend on
the learning goals.
The effects and learning goals should be measurable and clear–cut. It’s best to keep it simple. Three
months after playing, people will only remember one key takeaway. Therefore, limit the number of goals.
We ask our clients what the key takeaway should be. Adding in too many additional things, clouds the
core message.
Step two: produce, test, measure, repeat
Measuring effects is crucial. If we don’t test our products and analyse the outcomes, we do not know of
they are effective. We measure effects in three different ways.
User input analytics is information we get directly from players. We gather this data through anonymous
forms or by testing their knowledge and skills. Before and after playing the game, we test how much they
know about the contents and ask for their attitudes toward the main topic. We test throughout the
production process, as well as after launching. User input analytics are crucial: no one can tell us as much
about the effectiveness of the game as the target audience.
Game learning analytics is information we collect about how people play the game and what they learn
from it. We gather this information by observing and measuring their behaviour.
Observations tell us whether a set of game mechanics are a good fit for your learning goals. Because we
see how people interact during the game, we get a good grasp on where there takeaways come from.
Measurements are data and facts about user behaviour. We can measure choices, time spent, skip rates
and many other types of data. This can be related to the user input data. Therefore, we can predict how
user behaviour in the game relates to attitudes about your main topic.
Client analytics is information our clients give us after finishing projects. After all, they are the ones who see our games used in practice. For example, they tell us that after launching our digital escape room, 60% more people signed up for their sessions. They also tell us that the game made 30.000 people interact with their employer brand, or that people often mention pitfalls from the game in meetings.
Ready, set, measure!
Are you ready to build an effective game with us? Get in touch! Fill out our contact form and we’ll play
with your business challenge in no–time.
Meer tips?
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