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Serious Games Architectures and Engines

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Entertainment Computing and Serious Games

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 9970))

Abstract

The term Serious Game includes a wide, heterogeneous field of digital games with varying purposes and objectives and for a multitude of different application areas. All in common is the underlying software. This chapter gives an overview on the technical aspects of serious games including their software architectures and engines. As the general topic is manifold and the technical aspects of serious game software are quite comprehensive, this chapter covers the basic principles of and requirements for serious game software. It depicts selected software architectures and provides examples for game engines including a description of selected components.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Source Engine has been discontinued in 2014. Its successor, Source Engine 2, has been announced [125].

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bauhaus-Institute for Infrastructure Solutions (b.is), Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Weimar, Germany

    Heinrich Söbke

  2. Fraunhofer IOSB, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Alexander Streicher

Authors
  1. Heinrich Söbke
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  2. Alexander Streicher
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Heinrich Söbke .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. RheinMain University of Applied Sciences , Wiesbaden, Germany

    Ralf Dörner

  2. Technische Universität Darmstadt , Darmstadt, Germany

    Stefan Göbel

  3. TU Graz , Graz, Austria

    Michael Kickmeier-Rust

  4. University of Duisburg-Essen , Duisburg, Germany

    Maic Masuch

  5. TU Kaiserslautern , Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Katharina Zweig

Further Readings and Resources

Further Readings and Resources

1.1 Books

  • Gregory, J. Game Engine Architecture (2014). A basic reading about the internals of game engines. It is one of the standard references for services offered by game engines and therein applied algorithms and principles [77].

  • Cooper, K.M.L., and Scacchi, W. Computer Games and Software Engineering (2015). A recent collection of academic articles giving an overview about difficulties in software engineering for digital games. It serves as a starting point for a more theoretical approach to the topic [114].

  • McShaffry, M., Graham, D. Game Coding Complete (2012). The fourth edition of a standard work in game development. It gives an overview of the (technical) challenges in game development and delivers recipes to master them. [20]

  • Hocking, J. Unity in Action: Multiplatform Game Development in C# with Unity 5 (2015). A well-written recent introduction into the currently leading game development tool. This book is an excellent resource in case a concrete initial implementation, based on the widespread game engine Unity, is intended [115].

  • Nystrom, B. Game Programming Patterns (2014). A well-received book about the principles of game development. It covers specific patterns, which solve problems occurring specifically in game development. Thus, this book helps both to understand common game engines and game architectures and to design and implement proprietary ones [116].

Among further notable books are [54, 55, 117].

1.2 Websites

Gamasutra is a considerable online magazine about commercial digital game development. Among websites about technical aspects of game development are further gamedev.net [118] and AIGameDev [119]. A Q&A-platform about game development is provided by StackExchange [120].

Databases collecting information about game engines can be found on the websites DevMaster [121] and HTML5 Game Engines [122].

1.3 Conferences

All issues of commercial game development are addressed at the Game Developers Conference (GDC). It is the most renowned, mainly non-academic conference about development of digital games.

In the academic sector there are a few conferences dedicated to serious games, which allow discussions about their technical foundations. Among them are the European Conference on Games Based Learning (EGBL) and the Joint Conference on Serious Games (JCSG). Technical aspects of game development in general are handled for example by IFIP International Conference on Entertainment Computing (ICEC) and Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (ACE). Digital games in general are discussed at the renowned DiGRA Conference and Foundations of Digital Games (FDG).

1.4 Mailing Lists

The DiGRA-Mailing List [123] is highly frequented and discusses all topics of digital games. Another relevant mailing list is maintained by the IFIP Entertainment Computing Community [124].

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Söbke, H., Streicher, A. (2016). Serious Games Architectures and Engines. In: Dörner, R., Göbel, S., Kickmeier-Rust, M., Masuch, M., Zweig, K. (eds) Entertainment Computing and Serious Games. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9970. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46152-6_7

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