ACCESSIBILITY, REUSABILITY AND INTEROPERABILITY IN THE EUROPEAN SERIOUS GAME COMMUNITY
ACCESSIBILITY, REUSABILITY AND INTEROPERABILITY IN THE EUROPEAN SERIOUS GAME COMMUNITY

Summary/Abstract: Reuse and repurposing are two of the most basic software concepts. They are powerful practices that can deliver significant improvements in software productivity and quality, as well as substantially lower software development and maintenance costs. Unfortunately, few serious gaming research entities have been able to capitalize on the tremendous benefits that reuse and repurposing offer. The rapid growth of the serious game research community in the EU has set the stage for a large diversity in serious gaming scientific research in terms of the application domains (military, health, business, engineering), scientific disciplines (psychology, computer science, social science), and development solutions. It is often argued that the large growth has created a problematically fragmented serious gaming community. The fragmentation makes it difficult to maximize contributions and successes, avoid overlap, enable resource reuse, as well as harmonized development efforts through interoperability. Questions remain regarding the demographics and outcomes of this polymorphous research community. By answering these questions, fragmentation can be reduced and synergy can emerge. Moreover, by knowing the status quo, the serious gaming research community’s development can be analysed over time. The EU has tried to reduce the fragmentation in the serious gaming community by funding the Game and Learning Alliance (GALA) Network of Excellence. The GALA tasks included the establishment of a Technical Committee on Interoperability and Semantics, and ofthe European Academy of Serious Games (SG Academy), a web-based social networking website that enables EU serious gaming researchers, students, teachers and professionals to collaboratively build and share knowledge of serious gaming. In this paper, the authors build upon the expertise of this community to answer the following questions: What is the reusability and interoperability potential of existing serious games (SG)? Are information, software components, and SGs easily accessible? How many SGs have been developed through European funding? How many of these SGs are available online? How many are open source? How many require a user account? For what languages are these games available? What are the most common topics games are developed for? This research aims to enable the adoption of accessibility, reusability and interoperability principles within the SG community, as well as to support the development of the next generation of serious game researchers and developers.

• Details
• Contents