An Agent Based Approach to designing Serious Game: the PNPV case study

Serious games are designed to train and educate learners, opening up new learning approaches like exploratory learning and situated cognition. Despite growing interest in these games, their design is still an artisan process. On the basis of experience in designing computer simulation, this paper proposes an agent-based approach to guide the design process of a serious game. The proposed methodology allows the designer to bring forward the assessment of educational effectiveness to the design phase and to strike the right equilibrium between educational effectiveness and entertainment, realism and complexity. To this end, an agent based approach is proposed because it provides the actors involved in designing the game with specific tools and guidelines for determining whether the proposed model is clear and comprehensible to the students. The design of the PNPVillage game is used as a case study. The PNPVillage game aims to introduce and foster an entrepreneurial mindset among young students. It was implemented within the framework of the European project "I can... I cannot... I go!" Rev.2