End-to-End Game Development

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

 

Determining Simulation Activity

 

 

 

Introduction

“I found that I could handle the job in the field because I had played the game beforehand.”

This message is part of an email sent from a firefighter who had to serve for the first time as an incident commander. The benefit he had was that he had just finished playing the firefighter safety game Fully Involved. What the firefighter is describing is the goal of every serious simulation game: to transfer skills from the game itself back to the real world. It is a testimonial to the instructional design, to the needs and task analysis, to the playability of the game, and to the selection and creation of simulation activities that work. In this section, we’ll look at the process ...