Heuristica: Designing a serious game for improving decision making

This paper describes the design process and development of a 3D immersive serious game, Heuristica. The objective of this video game is to train players to improve their decision making by mitigating cognitive biases in an engaging and effective way. Heuristica is the result of three development and empirical evaluation cycles over 18 months. Several game features have been tested, and only those that improved learning while maintaining engagement have been retained in the latest version of the video game. These include reward, real time feedback, and game customization. Our development and playtesting process is summarized, and the implications for designing training are described.