The high prevalence of cardiovascular disease risk factors among adolescents of Nepal necessitates targeted interventions among this age group. Adolescents need a user friendly, acceptable and hands on media for cardiovascular health education. Digital technologies such as serious games have proven pedagogic potential. In this study, we aim to describe the steps followed to develop a serious game tailored to the needs of the adolescents in a sub-urban community in Nepal. We adopted a proactive and holistic three-step methodological approach in the development process: (1) defining learning goals, (2) developing and testing the game design and (3) incorporating active culturalization throughout the iterative game development process. We describe how culturalization was applied in each step to achieve educational viability. The final game called Happy Heart consisted of seven mini games: Name the food, Food sorter, Sugar rush, Salt seeker, Fat buster, Plan your meal and Activate. The game was augmented by an in-game journal that addressed complex concepts that could not be integrated into the game mechanics. The final game was culturally adapted and addressed the learning gaps of the target population. Learning through games has high potential in a lower middle-income country like Nepal.

Cross-organizational incident response requires first responders from multiple organizations to coordinate leadership, communication, and risk assessment under uncertainty and time pressure. While live exercises on physical ground remain central to such training, they are resource-intensive and challenging to organize regularly. Digital simulation, therefore, offers a complementary training approach, but its value depends on how effectively it supports incident command practices rather than physical realism. This paper presents the design and development of a digital simulation system for cross-organizational incident response training in risk assessment involving rescue and ambulance services. The study follows an action design research (ADR) approach conducted in close collaboration with practitioners. Empirical data from interviews, observations, and scenario development workshops were analyzed to identify training needs in leadership, coordination, communication, and dynamic risk management. The findings are synthesized into defining scenario characteristics and related digital simulation design principles. These emphasize abstraction, role-dependent perspectives, asymmetric information, and action-driven scenario progression to support training of continuous risk assessment and cross-organizational coordination. The paper contributes empirically grounded design knowledge for digital simulation-based training that complements live exercises.

In high-stakes professions such as that of negotiators and pilots, simulations are frequently employed as a risk-free training tool to facilitate the refinement of skills and decision-making abilities. While traditional simulations are effective, they are resource-intensive. In contrast, computer-based simulations offer scalability but may lack realism and sensory engagement. This study examines the potential of mobile phones in simulation-based learning, with a particular focus on a 3D hostage-taking scenario designed to enhance immersion through realistic interactions. By integrating a detailed environment and interactive elements, this approach demonstrates the potential of mobile technology to enhance the realism and engagement of training. Furthermore, the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) has transformed digital narration by moving beyond the limitations of rigid, time-consuming conversational trees. The traditional methods, which required a considerable degree of multidisciplinary expertise, frequently resulted in disrupted dialogue coherence due to the constraints imposed on the pathways available for communication. However, LLMs enable the creation of dynamic virtual personas from simple descriptions, thereby streamlining content creation and enhancing immersion through their expansive conversational capabilities. This publication reports on a digital hostage-taking simulation that utilised both mobile phones for communication and LLMs for character simulation, thereby highlighting advancements in feasibility and immersion.

High prevalence of behavioral risk factors for cardiovascular disease (CVD) warrants a life course approach for efficient prevention. Our previous HARDIC trial in semi-urban Nepal shows conventional CVD educational interventions for mothers improved knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP). Digital cardiovascular health promotion provides opportunities to efficiently reach adolescents. Our aim was therefore to develop such digital health promotion through a serious game that is educational and entertaining, as an innovative way to reach adolescents. We conducted a mixed-method study to assess adolescents’ KAP and perception regarding CVD, explored opportunities for digital cardiovascular health promotion, and developed a concept for a serious game prototype. In total, 649 adolescents grades 8-10 in two government and seven private schools in a semi-urban community of Nepal were surveyed cross-sectionally following parental consent. A self-administered questionnaire assessed KAP of CVD, mobile phone use, internet availability at home and gaming behaviors. For deeper understanding of adolescents’ perception on CVD, we conducted eight focus group discussions (FGDs) separately among boys and girls (n=76). The health belief model and the technology acceptance model guided FGD development and analysis. Eighty percent of adolescents were aged 13-15 years, 49% were girls and 40.4% studied in government schools. The median (IQR) percent scores for KAP were 70.6 (10.59), 78.5 (8.46) and 69.5 (11.59), respectively. Good KAP (median percent scores >75%) was found in 27.7%, 69% and 27.8% adolescents, respectively. Knowledge ( p <0.001), attitude ( p =0.025) and practice ( p <0.001) was higher among adolescents in private than government schools. Girls had better attitude than boys (<0.001). Furthermore, 98% adolescents had smartphone access and 91.6% had internet access.Preliminary FGD analyses show that adolescents mentioned physical, nutritional, mental, environmental, and hereditary causes for CVD. Financial and work-related burdens, as well as psychological, mental and family-related issues were perceived to influence CVD severity. Temptations for junk food and physical inactivity were barriers to follow heart-healthy behavior. Adolescents perceived serious games as beneficial and easy to use for creating CVD awareness. The game should offer challenge and exhibit increased levels of difficulty to remain stimulating throughout its intended use.We conclude that the existing gaps in knowledge and practice, with good attitude and excellent mobile and internet prerequisites, provide great opportunity for serious games in Nepal. The prototype of “Happy Heart” is being pilot-tested among adolescents, suggesting a promising way forward for digital cardiovascular health promotion.

INTRODUCTION: Serious games is an effort to combine the engagement and motivation from games with some sort of utility beyond mere entertainment. OBJECTIVES: The objective of this paper is to revisit and analyse six projects to explore the design space for serious games and derive design guidelines for serious games. METHODS: We analysed our project portfolio to identify a set of projects which satisfied well-established guidelines for design science research. By analysing these projects as well as their outcomes we generated a set of design principles for serious games. RESULTS: The results from this study is a conceptualisation of the design space for serious games and seven design principles. CONCLUSION: By explicating the game design component in serious games and relating it to the utility dimension we add to the understanding of the serious games from a game perspective, which is relevant to any development effort intending to use the persuasive and motivational power of games.

Phobia is a widespread mental illness, and severe phobias can seriously impact patients’ daily lives. One-session Exposure Treatment (OST) has been used to treat phobias in the early days,but it has many disadvantages. As a new way to treat a phobia, virtual reality exposure therapy(VRET) based on serious games is introduced. There have been much researches in the field of serious games for phobia therapy (SGPT), so this paper presents a detailed review of SGPT from three perspectives. First, SGPT in different stages has different forms with the update and iteration of technology. Therefore, we reviewed the development history of SGPT from the perspective of equipment. Secondly, there is no unified classification framework for a large number of SGPT. So we classified and combed SGPT according to different types of phobias. Finally, most articles on SGPT have studied the therapeutic effects of serious games from a medical perspective, and few have studied serious games from a technical perspective. Therefore, we conducted in-depth research on SGPT from a technical perspective in order to provide technical guidance for the development of SGPT. Accordingly, the challenges facing the existing technology has been explored and listed.

Games as a service is similar to software as a service, which provides players with game content on a continuous monetization model. Game revenue forecast is vital to game developers to make the right business decisions, such as determining the marketing budget, controlling the development cost, and setting up benchmarks for evaluating game publishing performance. How to make the revenue forecast and integrate it with the game publishing process is hard for small and medium-sized independent (indie) game developers. This includes all steps of the process, from forecasting to decision-making based on the results. This paper provides a data-driven method that uses the mobile game revenue forecast based on different time-series prediction models to drive the game publishing. We demonstrate how to use the data-driven method to guide an indie game studio to forecast revenue and then set the revenue forecast as the internal benchmark to drive game publishing. In practice, we involve a real game project from an indie game studio and provide guidance for one of their casual game projects. Then, based on the revenue forecast, we discuss how to set the revenue forecast as an internal benchmark and drive the actions for mobile game publishing. Finally, we make a conclusion on how our data-driven method can be used to drive mobile game publishing and also discuss future research work.

E-learning is a widely used learning method, but with the development of society, traditional E-learning method has exposed some shortcomings, such as the boring way of teaching, so that it is difficult to increase the enthusiasm of students and raise their attention in class. The application of serious games in E-learning can make up for these shortcomings and effectively improve the quality of teaching. When applying serious games to E-learning, there are two main considerations: educational goals and game design. A successful serious game should organically combine the two aspects and balance the educational and entertaining nature of serious games. This paper mainly discusses the role of serious games in E-learning, various elements of game design, the classification of the educational goals of serious games and the relationship between educational goals and game design. In addition, we try to classify serious games and match educational goals with game types to provide guidance and assistance in the design of serious games. This paper also summarizes some shortcomings that serious games may have in the application of E-learning.

Gamification is the application of game design elements in non-gaming contexts to reach some purposes. It has been proposed as a solution in several domains, such as teaching, corporate training and healthy living. This paper presents the design and evaluation of the skill tree method which is a part of a gamified approach to motivate and support NEET-youth (Not in Education, Employment or Training) to leave their isolation and take steps towards better inclusion in society. The overall approach is based on two principles: 1) it targets adolescents with an interest in games 2); it utilizes their interest in games as the starting point for the intervention. Part of the intervention is based on a skill tree which maps in-game skills to out-of-game skills and visualizes the output so that the participant can become better aware of how their interest can drive personal development towards societal participation. The paper presents an evaluation of the skill tree method from the project staff perspective. The findings are positive but some need for improvements in the method as well as the tool were identified.

Marketing is vital for game businesses. However, it is hard to reach the target audiences and choose the right marketing strategies for different user acquisition channels in mobile game publishing. This paper shows how business intelligence can guide independent (indie) mobile game developers to do marketing promotion based on a data-driven method. We apply and extend the ARM funnel model from social game publishing to mobile game publishing and provide a data-driven method to evaluate the marketing promotion performance. First, in order to address indie game marketing challenges, we propose a data-driven method by defining key metrics and applying two different analysis methods for assessing mobile game marketing promotion. Second, we apply our data-driven method to an indie mobile game project and guide the indie game studio to determine the potential marketing promotion issues. Third, we also provide suggestions on improving marketing performance based on analysis results, especially by differentiating between channels. Finally, we summarize how our method can be generalized and used to guide indie mobile game marketing promotion, find high-quality channels for user acquisition, improve the marketing promotion effect, and discuss future research work.

Relevant research has shown the potential to understand the game user experience (GUX) more accurately and reliably by measuring the user's psychophysiological responses. However, the current studies are still very scarce and limited in scope and depth. Besides, the low-detection accuracy and the common use of the professional physiological signal apparatus make it difficult to be applied in practice. This article analyzes the GUX, particularly flow experience, based on users' physiological responses, including the galvanic skin response (GSR) and heart rate (HR) signals, captured by low-cost wearable devices. Based on the collected data sets regarding two test games and the mixed data set, several classification models were constructed to detect the flow state automatically. Hereinto, two strategies were proposed and applied to improve classification performance. The results demonstrated that the flow experience of game users could be effectively classified from other experiences. The best accuracies of two-way classification and three-way classification under the support of the proposed strategies were over 90% and 80%, respectively. Specifically, the comparison test with the existing results showed that Strategy1 could significantly reduce the negative interference of individual differences in physiological signals and improve the classification accuracy. In addition, the results of the mixed data set identified the potential of a general classification model of flow experience.

The learning goals of project-based courses are typically specific for each involved discipline. Game development is deeply interdisciplinary and some of its core principles are shared across disciplines, from art to programming. This article presents a project-based approach where students majoring in arts and students majoring in technology share learning objectives. The course has been developed in a Sino-Scandinavian collaboration. Experiences from well-established Scandinavian game development programmes have been transferred to a Chinese university context. This article presents an explorative mixed method evaluation of this course. The research design had two phases with an initial qualitative analysis resulting in a set of observations that were tested in the second, quantitative phase. A total of 34 students from a range of disciplines participated in a two week course. The quantitative analysis shows that art (n=13) and technology (n=14) students' reported very similar experiences and similar insights into core learning objectives. This study shows that deeply interdisciplinary project-based courses, with shared learning objectives can successfully be conducted even in a context with no prior experience of such approaches.

With the continuous development of the game industry, research in the game field is also deepening. Many interdisciplinary areas of knowledge and theory have been used to promote the development of the game industry. Business intelligence technologies have been applied to game development for game design and game optimization. However, few systematic research efforts have focused on the field of game publishing, particularly with regard to independent (indie) game publishing. In this paper, we analyse data collected from a set of interviews with small indie game developers. The results indicate that most of the indie game developers have already used business intelligence for game self-publishing, although three main challenges have been identified: first, how to conduct marketing promotion and improve the return on investment (ROI); second, how to collect game publishing data; and third, how to analyse the data in order to guide game self-publishing. Our interviews also reveal that the business model applied to a game significantly impacts the role of game analytics. The study expands and advances the research on how game analytics can be used for game publishing, particularly for indie game self-publishing.

As a business model, the essence of games is to provide a service to satisfy the player experience. From a business perspective, development in the game industry has led to the application of Business Intelligence (BI) becoming more and more extensive. However, related research lacks systematic examination and precise classification. This paper provides a comprehensive literature review of BI used in the game industry, focusing primarily on game analytics. This research mainly studies and discusses five aspects. First, we explore game analytics aspects in the available literature based on the traditional game value chain. Second, we find out the main purposes of using analytics in the game industry. Third, we present the problems or challenges in the game area, which can be addressed by using game analytics. Fourth, we also list different algorithms that have been used in game analytics for prediction. Finally, we summarize the research areas that have already been covered in literature but need further development. Based on the categories established after the mapping and the review findings, we also discuss the limitations of game analytics and propose potential research points for future research.

Serious games and gamification have been proposed as approaches to solve problems in various areas by utilizing game technologies, game design components and even fully fledged games. However, when games are applied in a context outside the gaming sphere where users are not used to game interfaces and game culture, this may cause problems. In the case of cultural heritage applications this may create confusion or even put people off if they don’t understand what to do to take part in the experience. This chapter contributes a synthesized retrospective overview of three successive research and development projects conducted at the University of Skövde since 2007 and will present theoretical frameworks, conceptual studies, and production models for cultural heritage experiences for diverse audiences. In particular, we present a detailed case of a cultural heritage site which has been enhanced by game design concepts and visualizations to provide a richer experience for visitors. The chapter will also show the importance of user experience testing as an integral part of the production cycle in order to ensure a pleasant and understandable visit for visitors with different backgrounds and experiences of video games.

Game analytics has been used in game development and game research. However, less work focus on the game publishing side, especially on the new version update evaluation. This paper shows how game analytics can be used to guide game version updates. We innovatively view mobile game publishing as maintaining a fish tank and use our Fish Tank Model (FTM) to evaluate how game version updates improve players’ activation and game revenue. First, we define some key metrics for evaluating mobile game performance based on FTM. Second, we introduce a real game project to develop and apply FTM to the new version update. Third, based on analyzing the changes before and after the game version update, we provide suggestions on how to improve the new version. Finally, we summarize how to use our data-driven model to guide the mobile game new version update evaluation and continue to improve the game content.

The extensive use of simulation-based serious games (SSGs) has made a revolution in educational techniques. As a potentially significant feature for SSG design and evaluation, the term fidelity (the similarity between an SSG and its real reference) emerges and attracts increasing attention. The study of fidelity not only benefits the design, development, and analysis of an SSG with the consideration of improving the learning effect but also contributes to the investment reduction of an SSG. However, the term fidelity is used inconsistently in the current literature. The introduction of new technologies (e.g., virtual reality) and the blend of multiform SSGs also facilitate the extension of fidelity with new connotations. All lead to confusing concepts and vague measure metrics. Besides, the relationship between fidelity and learning effect is still uncertain. A new vision and a comprehensive conceptual framework of fidelity for more general applications are in need. In this paper, further exploration and discussion of these issues in relation to fidelity of SSGs are presented through a systematic review. A general conceptual framework considering both aspects of the SSG system itself and the learners is developed and applied to analyze fidelity in SSGs. Based on that, a discussion on fidelity-related issues of SSG design and development is presented.

Business intelligence has been applied in the area of game development research for many years. However, few systematic research efforts are focusing on the game publishing side, especially for the ...