Serious Games
Also known as الألعاب الجدية
Definition
Serious games are full games built for a purpose beyond entertainment (training, assessment, behavior change or awareness) while still holding to real game design standards of challenge, agency and feedback. They are built so that people keep playing because the game holds their interest.
A game people abandon teaches nothing, so serious games borrow the production disciplines of entertainment games: narrative, art direction, difficulty curves, sound and playtesting. They apply them to a defined learning objective and to an audience that is often playing during working hours.
They fit high-stakes and high-repetition contexts: safety behavior, ethics and compliance decisions with real dilemmas, customer interaction, and leadership judgment. Their production cost means they are usually reserved for content with a large audience or a long shelf life, where the investment amortizes.