Raph Koster is a renowned game designer known for his work on Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies. He argues that games are puzzles that teach players to solve problems and learn patterns by practicing permutations in a low-stakes environment. Fun comes from the cognitive challenge of mastering a problem and the release of endorphins from learning. Boredom occurs when a game provides no challenges. Serious games discussed at a Canada symposium included virtual training simulations, educational games, and social issue games addressing topics like homelessness, pandemics, and geopolitics.

1. 1
Fun and Serious Games
www.cartoonstock.com

2. 2
Raph Koster
http://www.raphkoster.com/
Raphael "Raph" Koster
author of
A Theory of Fun for
Game Design is widely
recognized for his work
as the lead designer of
Ultima Online and the
creative director behind
Star Wars Galaxies.

3. 3http://www.theoryoffun.com

4. 4
What Games Are
Games are puzzles to solve.
We learn the underlying patterns, grok them fully,
and file them away to re-run as needed.
Difference between games and reality is that the
stakes are lower with games.
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5. 5
What Games Are
Games serve as very fundamental and powerful
learning tools.
“Play” and “Games” both belong in the same
category of “iconified representations of human
experience that we can practice with and learn
patterns from.
Books vs Games. (According to Koster) Games can
accelerate the grokking process ... where you can
practice a pattern and run permutations.
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6. 6
Fun is all about our brains feeling good -- the
release of endorphins into our system.
One of the subtlest releases of endorphins is at the
moment of triumph when we learn something or
master a task.
Our bodies reward us with pleasure.
In other words, fun is the act of mastering a problem
mentally.
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What is Fun?

7. 7
Boredom is the opposite
When you feel a
game/book/class/parental
meal experience is
repetitive or derivative, it
grows boring because it
presents no cognitive
challenge.

8. 8
Ian Bogost
“Playing video games is a kind of
literacy. Not the literacy that helps us
read books or write term papers, but the
kind of literacy that helps us make or
critique the systems we live in . . . .
When we learn to play games with an
eye toward uncovering their procedural
rhetorics, we learn to ask questions
about the models such games present”
(Bogost).
!

9. 9
James Gee
Multimodal Principle.
“Meanings and knowledge are built up
through various modalities (images,
words, interactions, abstract design,
sound, etc.)”
!

10. 10
Lori Shyba
Social issue games, like other activist
art, can tune us in to the world around
us. Games can help define the things we
believe in and can amplify our ethical
consciousness by provoking us to take
action.
!

11. Serious Games Canada/
Jeux Serieux Canada

12. Serious Games Canada Symposium, Games for Training
Distil Interactive – Ottawa, Ontario
Response Ready is a virtual training solution based on the Canadian
Standards Association's (CSA) Z731-03 standard. It tests and develops users'
ability to identify hazards and assess risk.
http://www.distilinteractive.com/

13. Serious Games Canada Symposium, Games for Training
Coole Immersive -- Edmonton, Alberta
Focusing on front line work roles for the service rig sector of the oil & gas industry,
SimuLynx Rig Skills uses a first person perspective 3D environment to give the user
an immersive "hands-on, off-site" learning experience.
http://www.cooleimmersive.com

14. Serious Games Canada Symposium, Games for Education
Knight Elimar’s Last Joust
Richard Levy, Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary
A virtual environment game for promoting literacy across the
curriculum.
http://www.ucalgary.ca/evds/levy

15. Serious Games Canada Symposium, Social Issue Games
Contagion
York University and Simon Fraser University
"Contagion” is a web-based educational game in which players can learn self-
care practices and play through ethical considerations in a virtual world on
the brink of pandemic.
http://contagion.edu.yorku.ca/

16. Serious Games Canada Symposium, Social Issue Games
Terry Lavendar — Homeless, It’s No Game
Simon Fraser University
“Welcome to Life on the
Street. Can you survive for
24 hours with your esteem
and your person intact?”
Selected for the game
showcase at the annual
Games for Change
conference in New York
City. It's one of only 17
games to be featured.
http://www.homelessgame.net/

17. Serious Games Canada Symposium, Social Issue Games
Tibet and Oceanquest
Digital Media Lab, University of Calgary
Tibet – Status of Tibet as occupied territory Oceanquest – Ocean Floor Ecology
http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~parker/new/Tibet/tibethome.html