1. Fun and Serious Games
www.cartoonstock.com
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2. Raph Koster
Raphael quot;Raphquot; 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 http://www.raphkoster.com/
Galaxies.
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3. http://www.theoryoffun.com
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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. 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. What is Fun?
• 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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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.
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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).
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9. James Gee
 Multimodal Principle.
“Meanings and knowledge are
built up through various
modalities (images, words,
interactions, abstract design,
sound, etc.)”
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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.
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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 quot;hands-on, off-sitequot; 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
quot;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 Oceanquest – Ocean Floor Ecology
territory
http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~parker/new/Tibet/tibethome.html

18. Blame Canada
Lori Editorializes
Blame Canada for our tenacity of being “rooted in
reality.” Blame the NFB and the CBC for leading the
world in documentary media and critical engagement
with questions about fact, truth, point of view, and bias.
Following this, Serious Games Canada is poised to
contribute to this legacy by advocating new ways of
simulating reality. Whether they be games for training,
or for education, or for activism, our common theme is
to bring us closer to conditions of “safety.” Blame us if
we can make it happen.