Comparison of game engines for serious games

Abstract

Serious educational games are specially designed computer games which are used in an educational setting, in other words, they are interactive competitive lessons with defined learning outcomes which allow students to have fun during learning. The importance of serious games in contemporary educational practice is increasing. Applying serious games in teaching, students facilitate the learning process, adopt new skills and abilities, show more interest in learning, are more focused and more active in a class, and better understand and apply lessons learned. The complexity of serious games requires large efforts for their development. For the development of serious games teachers mostly use commercial game engines. One of the important parts of game development is a selection of appropriate development tool. Due to the range of available tools the choice of platforms for serious games is a challenge, whose selection often has considerably different goals and technical requirements depending on context and usage. The aim of this paper is to propose criteria which should be considered before selecting a game engine for serious games and shows results of a comparison of evaluated most popular game engines. Some recommendations for teachers about choosing the most suitable game engines for serious games development are also presented.