Chapter 4 Serious Games and Seriously Fun Games Can

As already elaborated in the previous chapters of this volume, serious games have been acclaimed for playing an increasingly important role in learning, psychological development, and social change (see Ratan & Ritterfeld, this volume, chapter 2; Ritterfeld, Cody, & Vorderer, this volume, chapter 1). Serious games represent the effort to facilitate education through digital entertainment media, as explicated in entertainment education models (Ritterfeld & Weber, 2006; Wang & Singhal, this volume, chapter 17). These models suggest a sweet spot to perfectly blend entertainment and education together in one game experience. Through this entertainment education blend, the advantage of fun game play calls attention to some important social and educational issues, spurring deeper thinking, discussion, and learning, as well as creating opportunities for vicarious experiences that would be otherwise impossible. Although this approach has a tremendous theoretical appeal, it still remains unclear whether and to what extent the educational enrichment of media content into an entertainment format impacts the entertainment value. Many so-called edutainment game titles are developed with a tight budget and suffer from poor game design and presentation. The fun experiences elicited by these games are rather limited, and the hope that players would select those games and deliberately play them is often not fulfilled (e.g., Moore, Rosenberg & Coleman, 200S). Games that exclusively rely on repetitive structures and practices can hardly provide an immersive and engaging space that enables joyful gaming experiences. However, there has been a notable increase of more sophisticated serious games (e.g., Re-Mission, 2006) in recent years (Ratan & Ritterfeld, this volume, chapter 2), and those games also face the challenge of being successful entertainment education. The seriousness of serious games may already diminish the pleasure even in some sophisticated games. Such an unintended effect may result from two different processes: (1) the serious label and (2) the seriousness of serious games, which is absent in entertainment games. First, simply labeling a game as serious or educational may already reduce its appeal to a player. Digital game play emerged from purely leisure oriented cultural practices, and if learning is prescribed through gaming it may inhibit the fun experience Serious Games and Seriously Fun Games 49