Bridging the gap between user and information: A case study of a serious game

Serious games, or games created for purposes beyond entertainment, facilitate communication between educators and learners. By harnessing the lessons prescribed by research and commercial entertainment games, serious games can teach, provide feedback, and evaluate learning, all within a single system. However, development is complex and rife with pitfalls. This paper describes lessons learned from the design, development, and experimentation of a serious game, Medulla, which can be applied to other serious games to improve the development process. Suggestions address positioning of the learning content within the game world, modality of the content, the relationship between the game and the content, and how to cater to a learner-player audience.