Introduction (group)

The entertainment and gaming industry is constantly evolving. New advances in things like graphics are driven by a high demand by consumers. These consumers include children to young adults, many of them students. Parallel to the evolution of the computer era, and the expansion of the population of computer-adept individuals, entertainment too has constantly been evolved functionally to incorporate better ways for social interaction (Freedman and Liu, 1996). The field of communication and education has always benefited from such advances; however, often, our willingness to embrace these advances greatly lags behind the rate of the advances.

While biomedical communications has yet to fully venture into educational gaming, the latter industry has always been present. Many educational games are circulated and played in the classrooms worldwide. Where they differ from purely entertaining and mainstream games is in the reception possibly due to the nature of their play. Education games are often single player games - multiplayer only to the extent of roster accessibility to gage one’s rank amongst peers - whose main function is to educate (Chang et. al., 2009). Indeed, this is what the purpose of educational games are, to education. But, the method by which they do so is often one that pushes information towards the player. Learning is accomplished by rigorous regiments that may be tedious, too challenging or too easy (Koschmann et. al., 1996). In short, their success depends still on a structured method of delivery, set within an educational institute that can monitor the use of such programs. The attractiveness of such games outside such institutions are, thus, limited.

Games are successful for their abilities to entertain. They entertain by engaging players with a set of motivators that include: challenge, curiosity, fantasy, control, competition, cooperation, and recognition (Hsu et. al., 2009). For example, the latter half of these motivators entice players by catering and fostering their social needs. Variety, and informal engagements allow players to explore the world at their own place. Their advance as playable characters are determined by themselves, meeting challenges as they see fit. Their ability to make their own decisions, to reap the rewards of their efforts, and to control their own evolution determine the attractiveness and success of a game. So what do games offer to educators and communicators? The purpose is not to simply adopt these addictive factors into our own profession, but it warrants us, nevertheless, to examine what it is that promotes such high levels of replay.

The reason why replay is of such importance is that it is where educational games fall short. Educational games, by their conventions, decrease replay value because of any of the reasons mentioned earlier, such as repetitiveness, and information bombardment. Yet, as it is with knowledge communication, repetition and regiment are critical to knowledge integration by the recipient (Bahrick et. al., 2005). Exploration and immersion within the knowledge at hand allow individuals to not only retain information for short periods of time, like for the expanse of a 3 hour exam, but to retain and recall the information in the long-term.

This project intends to explore, to create and provide educators with an education resource that more fully adopts the current standards and conventions of the gaming and entertainment industry. The objective is to create a novel 3D game that may help students ages understand immuno-physiological processes within the body. The approach and philosophy that will be adopted is that of informal learning, to allow the student or player to advance and explore the material or world at their own pace. The belief is that by doing do, we will allow the game to engage the player with all that is entertaining about a game. The replay that follows will allow the students to learn the scientific material presented to them through complex structural, functional, and social interactions that a game can offer. Ultimately, students and player will motivate themselves to play and learn.