The development of a formal game component framework for analyzing how serious games can impact readiness to change

Introduction. Despite the growing interest in the business world as well as the academic world for serious gaming, significant knowledge gaps remain to be researched; one of which concerns the development of unified formalized methods to analyze serious games in order to explain the nature of the impact they promise in organizational change processes. For this goal this research develops a formal game component framework that defines game components and their relations, and that can be used as an analysis tool to reverse engineer the components of a game in order to help researchers understand how a game is functional to impacting readiness to change. Research methodology, data gathering and research approach. The overarching research methodology is that of the Design Science Research Framework: a formal game component framework is developed based on an extensive literature review and evaluated based on a case study. The case study is performed with employees of Philips, as they are change recipients of the large scale business transformation Philips is currently undergoing. The case study research approach includes a triangulated method: a parallel method to using the formal framework is executed so the results from two methods can be compared. Development, improvement and usability assessment. Based on the literature review a framework is developed that defines three types of game components: elements, mechanics and dynamics. The framework proposes that they are hierarchally related to one another. Furthermore it is proposed that game design principles are propositions based on which game designers make choices for what game components to include in their design. Based on the case study the formal framework is improved. Firstly a fourth game component is added to the framework labeled ‘experience’ and hierarchally placed above all other types of components. Secondly, important insights into the perspectives of the game designer versus the game player are derived from the data. Based on these insights the framework is adapted and now includes information about ‘game design choices’ versus ‘game design principles’. The results from the triangulation show that both the researcher, based on retrieved data from interviewing game players, and the designer of the game were able to identify the same components to a significant degree using the formal game component framework. Conclusions and recommendations. It is concluded that the formal game component framework is a usable and valuable tool for reverse engineering a serious game on its functionality to impacting readiness to change. It is recommended that this tool is used in reverse engineering analyses of serious games in order to find game design principles that guide choices for game design with the purpose of impacting readiness to change. Future research. Three research directions are proposed for the usage of the formal game component framework that extent beyond the context of this specific research: using the formal game component for reverse engineering games that are designed as tools to impact their environment, using the framework for reverse engineering games that are designed for any other imaginable purpose, using the framework to find recurring patterns in game design.