What are different approaches to the development of e-learning solutions in the  emerging 'serious games' sector? What are their potential effectiveness and commercial sustainability? The article explains learning based on serious games that considers and contrasts the current practices of customised project based e-earning package development against emerging web 2.0 solutions based on end user empowerment and customisation. It also examines the implications for learning management systems (LMS) and some of the issues which will need to be addressed by emerging serious games.

Serious Games has only recently emerged as a result of a combination of the popularity and engaging qualities of computer games and the development of affordable broadband communications, wireless connectivity and 3D imaging and rendering technologies. Serious Games or Games Based Learning (GBL) leverage the power of computer games technologies and methodologies to captivate and engage end-users for a specific purpose such as to develop new knowledge and skills. Electronic games of all types have, from the beginning, helped to develop motor skills, hand-eye co-ordination, spatial awareness, memory and lateral thinking, but their use and evaluation for specific learning tasks is relatively new and are stimulating further research on their role in education. Serious Games can also enable learners to undertake tasks and experience situations which would otherwise be impossible and undesirable for cost, time, logistical and safety reasons. Flight simulators, business games, health and safety simulations and military exercises make good examples in this direction.

'Games can engage, entertain and educate'

Serious Games offer learning experiences which engage the user and, through the use of compelling storylines, drama, characterisation and humour encourage learners to persist at learning tasks, experiment with new approaches and develop higher levels of cognitive thinking. Serious Games can also incorporate data tracking to support trainer assessment to high levels of detail and provide tools for self-assessment and analysis. Early "edutainment" applications of the quiz game, "Who want to be a millionaire?" genre were designed to teach facts but, except for primary education, have largely failed. Such applications were relatively easy to incorporate into LMS and be made SCORM compliant but the present and future generation serious games have much more complex learning objectives and present greater challenges to standards compliance and learning management systems.

Serious Games and Learning Management Systems

Serious Games applications can be categorised for the purpose of Learning Management Systems as follows :-

• Edutainment quiz games (e.g. "Who want to be a millionaire")
• Single player task-based simulations with decision trees
• Single player role playing simulations in persistent virtual scenarios
• Multi player task based simulations (non-persistent)
• Multi player role playing simulations in persistent virtual worlds

Good serious games development will incorporate data capture and behaviour tracking and those  games which test the user's ability to remember facts, perform tasks within a requisite timescale or make "correct" decisions can generally use that captured data to feed into Learning Management Systems.

However, there are real issues with serious games and standards compliance such as SCORM and integration into LMS mainly because, most modern serious games do not follow the linear based learning patterns around which these standards are based. Serious games offer a wider spectrum of learning outcomes both at an individual and group level than previous e-Learning approaches and the evaluation of these outcomes is more difficult to integrate into LMS. The concept of content development and SCORM compliance is difficult to reconcile with serious games which engage multiple users in creative and freeform interaction.

Serious Games development issues Amongst the challenges of developing commercial serious games e-learning applications are :-

• Prohibitive development costs
• Cost and difficulty of customisation
• Working with subject matter experts with limited knowledge of gaming pedagogy
• User expectations
• SCORM compliance and links to LMS

All of these issues significantly affect the cost effectiveness of e-learning and developer sustainability.

This article looks at 3 different approaches to serious games development and examines the implications for content development and integration with LMS.

Serious games development aproach

Flash application development

Pixelearning are a small UK elearning developer based at Coventry University's Serious Games Institute. As a small but highly proficient developer with subject matter expertise in business management training and entrepreneurship competing in a global market, Pixelearning have to produce engaging, visually attractive, effective and robust corporate elearning solutions to often very limited timescales and budgets.

After evaluating a range of avenues, Pixelearning's approach to development has become based around the use of Adobe Flash as a platform to provide visual appeal, interactivity, productivity and a robust interface. They are also currently exploring building a learning platform known as "learning beans" to enable subject matter experts to create their own customised solutions. The strategy of using Flash as a development environment has been strongly influenced by the fact that in the corporate environment, there are often very strong IT policies in place which restrict the use of downloads and pug-ins for browser based learning applications. Since Flash is probably the most universal browser tool on the market, Pixel decided it offered the greatest potential for the corporate market.

Pixel's business games are simulations based on user role playing and the main issue with integration into LMS is not a technical one, but a cost issue for some of the reasons previously outlined.

e-Learning professionals used to linear systems with standards based compliance and integration into LMS find the additional cost and complexity of designing a games-based approach to user engagement and effective learning outcomes a major barrier, which will only be overcome by :-

• Education and awareness of games based pedagogical outcomes
• More reliable data on the cost effectiveness of games-based learning
• Developer productivity tools to reduce costs and improve communication with the client

Since serious games is still an emerging market yet to be  fully embraced by learning professionals, its' full potential make take some time to realise.

Compliance Issues
• Non-linear design and interactivity
• Wide spectrum of learni