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Serious 'Slow' Game Jam - A Game Jam Model for Serious Game Design

Published: 30 August 2023 Publication History

Abstract

The Serious ‘Slow’ Game Jam (SSGJ) is a new model for use in serious game design and research. Game jams contribute to creative, innovative and collaborative design, however, game jams for serious purposes require an alternative model that integrates domain experts within the jammer community to ensure the validity of their designs and content. Furthermore, a rigorous yet accessible design methodology is required to balance pedagogic and game aspects to support jammers, as well as to assist researchers in subsequent analysis and evaluation. A standard entertainment game jam model does not afford support for these aspects. The SSGJ model addresses these needs through an inclusive, collaborative, and creative framework for multidisciplinary teams, which includes: encouraging reflection and knowledge exchange; improving content validity; and providing continuous support and mentoring to participants. Reflection on the model highlights the importance of framing serious game jams as explicitly educational activities and embedding them into existing training contexts. The SSGJ model contributes to a collaborative serious game design methodology for the wider research community, irrespective of application domains.

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cover image ACM Other conferences
ICGJ '23: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Game Jams, Hackathons and Game Creation Events
August 2023
59 pages
ISBN:9798400708794
DOI:10.1145/3610602
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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Published: 30 August 2023

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Author Tags

  1. Game Design Methodology
  2. Interdisciplinary Game Design
  3. Serious Game Jam Design
  4. Serious Game Jams
  5. Serious Games

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