Authoring multiplayer serious games

Over the last few years the idea of using video games for serious purposes such as education, training or health has gained widespread popularity. These games are, in contrast to their commercial counterparts, often meant to be played by single players. However, it has been shown that playing in groups trains social skills, supports collaborative learning and increases motivation. Multiplayer games therefore are especially suited for serious applications, but also pose additional challenges during their development. Since most serious games are made by smaller teams on a lower budget than commercial games, there already exist concepts to reduce the complexity of their development process. We are planning to extend one of these approaches, namely authoring tools, in order to explicitly addresses the development of multiplayer games. Our concept will include templates that reduce the complexity of their implementation and guide authors, analysis & validation-algorithms that will give hints on how balanced a game is and rapid prototyping functionality that allows a single author to test the game in place of multiple players.