Serious games: Quality characteristics evaluation framework and case study

Abstract

The use of serious games in teaching and training is increasing; however, there is a lack of suitable evaluation frameworks to evaluate the different quality characteristics in the serious games. This study highlights previous evaluation frameworks and then emphasizes different quality characteristics that have been used in evaluating serious games. The study divided the discussed quality characteristics into primary and secondary characteristics based on their use in the literature. The study proposes a framework to evaluate several dimensions of serious games by choosing and combining appropriate quality characteristics. Robocode a programming serious game was used as a case study in which the framework has been applied to it where fifteen students in Queen's University Belfast played the game and evaluated different quality characteristics based on the proposed framework. The results showed that Robocode overall evaluation is good; however, the framework recommends changes to be applied to the game to increase the game understandability to be played by the users without the need for supervision or tutors.