1. © Carrie Heeter, 2010
Foundations of Serious Games
Professor Carrie Heeter

2. © Carrie Heeter, 2010
 Emily Brozovic
 Sean Huberty

3. © Carrie Heeter, 2010
 Daniel: The McDonalds Game
 Sandrine: Happy Night Club
 Steve: Cutthroat Capitalism
 Derek: Spectre
 Alan: Harpooned
 Kristine: Peacemaker
 June: Cow Clicker
 John: The Cat and the Coup

4. © Carrie Heeter, 2010
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Finals
10/27 11/3 11/10 11/17 11/24 12/1 12/5 12/15
playtest final game
Meaningful Play
report due
Playtest
report due
Final project web
site, game due
Graded on quality of RESEARCH.
A successful playtest informs important
design CHANGES. (Confirming that your
game was perfect would be a failed
Playtest.)
(no LIVE
class)

5. © Carrie Heeter, 2010

6. © Carrie Heeter, 2010
 Understand your player
 Online research
 Talk to stakeholders
 If there’s a context, spend time in that context
 DO NOT DESIGN FOR YOURSELF.
 Background knowledge?
 Interest, involvement?
 Motivation related to game goals?
 Distractions?

7. © Carrie Heeter, 2010
 Be specific.
 Be tangible.
 Come up with a real situation
 Consider talking with a stakeholder.

8. © Carrie Heeter, 2010
 Definitely going to be needed.
 Expect to learn a lot.
 Share with the team.
 Keep references for your web site.

9. © Carrie Heeter, 2010
 Other games on your topic? Check out and
analyze
 Other games similar to your game
mechanics? Check out and analyze.

10. © Carrie Heeter, 2010
 W8/Tonight:
 30 ideas in 30 minutes, across 2 serious domains
 Narrow to one domain and audience
 This week: Explore the problem space
 Player research
 Possible stakeholder?
 Content research
 W9/Next week: Brainstorm again with a
renewed, deeper understanding of your
audience, the need, the content. Decide on a
core game mechanic and direction

11. © Carrie Heeter, 2010
 Continue research on all fronts
 Develop rough paper prototype of some
aspect of your game, with a clear idea of the
questions you want to answer.

12. © Carrie Heeter, 2010
 Conduct playtest and write up report (a
powerpoint document)

13. © Carrie Heeter, 2010
 Take a break and spend time with friends or
family

14. © Carrie Heeter, 2010
 Revise your prototype concept, polish your
game idea
 Finalize copy for web site

15. © Carrie Heeter, 2010
 Present final game and web site during class
 Turn in to TC office to Fedex to Carrie
 Celebrate

16. © Carrie Heeter, 2010
 2 possible serious domains/goals
 (health, learning, social change, news game,
training, gamification, other)
 Have one list for each domain, one scribe for
each game
 We’ll use my brand new game brainstorm
tool.
 RULE: draw one card from one deck and one
card from another deck.
 You can replace one but not both cards, at
most 2 times.

17. © Carrie Heeter, 2010