Document Type

Conference Paper

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

5.3 EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES, *pedagogy, Interdisciplinary

Publication Details

European Conference on Game Based Learning 2012

Abstract

Due to the inherently interdisciplinary nature of serious games their development
necessitates the effective collaboration of team members spanning multiple disciplines and skill sets (Adams 2010). In their attempts to harness these skills, most higher education projects have formed teams through academic/commercial partnerships, whereby academics and commercial developers combine their respective expertises in subject matter/pedagogy and game design/development. However considering the expertise in most higher education institutions and the recent surge in serious games courses at third level, one might reasonably conclude that higher education holds huge potential for developing serious games in-house. Yet surprisingly, such ventures are relatively few. Thus, while cross-faculty higher education collaborations may hold potential for developing serious games, the implications of such an approach are largely unexplored to date.
This paper aims to remediate this gap in the literature by presenting a phenomenological,
naturalistic case study of an innovative project based in one higher education institution which
involved multiple disciplines in the design and development of a serious game. Using a theoretical
framework for game design comprising the elements of play, pedagogy and fidelity, this paper
examines the impact of an interdisciplinary in-house approach on the design of this serious game, paying particular attention to the balancing of design elements and the impact of disciplinary
perspectives in this regard. As such this study adds a new dimension to established difficulties
involved in serious game design by illustrating the significant impact which interdisciplinary team work
practices, and associated disciplinary perspectives, can have on the design process and product.

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