Mobile Gaming - A Serious Business

Abstract

This paper describes the design and development of a mobile serious game and discusses the outcomes of a prototype evaluation. The game augments a physical location to represent a virtual company. Players take the role of business consultants hired by this company to help it address its problems and 'interview' virtual employees, obtaining information and physical artifacts, players must infer the problems behind the symptoms the company is facing, and offer change recommendations, utilizing higher level thinking skills. The game-like activities address issues common to business simulations by leveraging the contextual learning made possible by mobile devices and provide a context within which students bring their higher level thinking skills to bear on the problems presented by the game.