GDC thoughts: serious games… seriously?

Just back from an inspiring and enlightening, albeit exhausting, trip to San Fran for the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC), and I am reflecting on what I learned during the week. I saw some fantastic examples of games that combine beautiful art with addictive gaming strategy. The independent games were especially exciting, largely due to the fact that you get to hear right from the designers’ mouths the ways in which the games were created (Cletus Clay™ was my favorite. Check out how they went from clay to game!).

I spent most of my session time in the Serious Games Summit, hoping to learn from others who are creating games for learning purposes. While every session contained some valuable information, I was ultimately disappointed in the quality of instructional design and learning forethought of the serious games that were presented. What I saw were many examples where game design was carefully thought through, only to have learning goals and objectives considered as an afterthought: does the content fit within this game design? Can this game teach anyone anything? Learning seemed like a forced goal within the games. Like throwing spaghetti at the wall, it seemed to be left to chance that the games had any educational value.

It made me think of my days spent as an Information Architect and User Experience Designer, spotting programmer-designed interfaces from miles away. Serious games that have a game designer but no instructional design influence may be fun and beautiful, but are likely to fail from a targeted learning perspective. Until learning needs and objectives are considered and incorporated into the design of a game from the very beginning, it’s unlikely that the games will be effective and achieve consistent learning results.