Serious Games, Gamification, and Innovation Minitrack

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Serious Games are often considered to be technological applications that use games to engage individuals in an experience through which a learning or professional training aim can be explored. Serious Games use computer-mediated environments to facilitate experiential learning by simulating a real life business environment, enabling participants to explore the complexities of a business problem, including the emotional challenges. A benefit is that the learner has the opportunity to explore the dynamics of a business experience without the real life business and career consequences that may flow from failure. This provides learners with a ‘safe’ environment in which to explore the casual links between action and outcomes that can assist in the process of converting conceptual learning into application. To address these challenges and opportunities, this minitrack invites theoretical and empirical research that investigates how individuals, teams and organizations use serious games, gaming and gamification to simulate processes, solve problems, make decisions, create, innovate, learn, and create value.

This proposed minitrack aims to consolidate research on the art and science of Serious Games amongst the management and education research science community. It focuses on:


  • Theoretical foundations and practical approaches to understand, model, and design Serious Games
  • The use of Serious Games to learn, to collaborate, to train, and to innovate, and to co-create organizational and individual value
  • The impact of Serious Games characteristics on individual and team behavior
  • Methods, techniques, patterns, and best practices to support the adoption, the change management of Serious Games
  • The design, application, and evaluation of Serious Games

Minitrack Co-Chairs:

Imed Boughzala (Primary Contact)
Telecom Ecole de Management Institut Mines-Telecom, France
Email: imed.boughzala@it-sudparis.eu

Hélène Michel
Grenoble Ecole de Management, France
Email: helene.michel@grenoble-em.com

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Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Towards a Home-based Virtual Reality Game System to Promote Exercise
    ( 2017-01-04) Amresh, Ashish ; Salla, Rahul
    This paper presents the design and usability testing results for a home-based virtual reality game system that aims to promote exercise with the spin machine. The novelty of our approach lies in the design of the game mechanics that promote increased calorific output among the participants and the ease of setup with any commercially available Virtual Reality (VR) sensor. The paper describes the motivation behind the developed system, the design details of the games created to promote the use of the system and the results from a usability test conducted with 37 participants.
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    The Impact of Gamification on Word-of-Mouth Effectiveness: Evidence from Foursquare
    ( 2017-01-04) Wang, Lei ; Gunasti, Kunter ; Gopal, Ram ; Shankar, Ramesh ; Pancras, Joseph
    Companies are encouraging and incentivizing contributors of online word-of-mouth (WOM) through gamification elements such as badges, mayorships, points, and such. We study how gamification elements, which capture and signal contributors’ accumulated expertise, affect consumers’ perception of contributors’ knowledge, and therefore the perceived effectiveness of their contributed WOM. We focus on two specific gamification elements on Foursquare: badges, which signal breadth of knowledge, and mayorships, which signal depth of knowledge. Using experiments conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk, we find: (1) badges and mayorships that appear alongside contributors’ online WOM, provide a unique way to signal WOM contributors’ knowledge and therefore have an impact on the perceived effectiveness of such WOM; (2) the impact of badges on perceived WOM effectiveness is higher than that of mayorships. Our findings have important implications for the ongoing research on the impact of gamification and also suggest ways for firms to benefit from gamification.
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    Feedback on the integration of a serious game in the data modeling learning
    ( 2017-01-04) Boughzala, Imed ; Chourabi, Olfa ; Lang, Daniel ; Feki, Mondher
    Data Modeling (DM) is an important area in the Information System (IS) learning. In particular, in the IS analysis phase business analysts need to provide a comprehensive notation to avoid misunderstanding between software engineers and customer. Teaching DM is a challenging task, mainly because it lays great emphasis on theory. It remains often abstract, not consensual and complex to implement in real setting. In order to better motivate learners, this paper aims to assess the integration of Serious Games (SGs) in the DM learning. Previous researches on learning with SGs has mainly been focused on other areas of the IS domain, such as Business Process Management (BPM). In an attempt to fill this gap, this paper presents an exploratory experiment on the usage of the SG innov8, carried out within a business school’s master students. This SG initially designed for learning BPM, has been the subject of a gamification experiment in order to design a data model. The feedback from the students and teachers were quite positive.
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    Exploring Practical Potentials of Business Simulation Games
    ( 2017-01-04) Kim, J.B. ; Watson, Edward
    With the emergence of the digital generation, advances in technology, and the trend towards more experiential learning formats, business simulation games (BSGs) are increasingly used by educators today.  Of interest in this paper is the extent to which serious game playing, for business and technology professionals, influences work behaviors in practice. This study explores the business professional’s sense-making process when consciously reasoning about how BSG learning influences business practice. We adapt Toulmin’s framework for deconstructing practical reasoning to capture, analyze, and elicit patterns within arguments made regarding the application of BSG learning to business practice. The findings contribute to theories related to BSGs, and thus would benefit those practitioners who use BSGs.
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    Introduction to Serious Games, Gamification, and Innovation Minitrack
    ( 2017-01-04) Boughzala, Imed ; Michel, Helene