Effective Serious Games Development: A Step-by-step Guide for Beginners

This book showcases the entire lifecycle of a serious games project and guides the reader through different phases step by step. It follows a narrative approach, telling the story of a young game developer in a fictitious near-future setting who overcomes the challenges of a typical development process. The narrative is enriched by 15 short contributions from multinational experts on relevant topics for the development process of serious games.

This book describes a holistic approach to serious games development and follows a project from its very beginning to its end. It covers planning, creation, implementation and evaluation of a serious game. It does not cover technical details on how to write code or graphics for video games but rather focuses on the conceptualization of serious games and coordination between different roles and team members.

This book will be of great interest to beginners who want to use serious games to solve their problems. It will appeal to students of game development and also project managers who want to gain a better overview of the process as a whole and learn about tools and frameworks they can apply in their own context right away.

Philipp Busch is a game producer, designer, author and international keynote speaker. He teaches game-based approaches and agile methods at a variety of institutions and universities and learned his craft from cross-cultural teams all around the world. His company, Mind Games GmbH, supports the development of serious games for international institutions such as the UN, EU, FES, GIZ as well as the private sector and implements them in challenging global contexts. In his projects, he applies transparent, honest impact measurement and follows an ethical and sustainable development approach.