Gamification in Defense Acquisitions Training and Education: Creating an Ensemble of Experiences for Different Play Styles
Abstract
There have been significant advances in gaming and simulation technology over the past few years. This has also led to scholarship in the areas of game design and education and companies/studios that have successfully deployed game-based educational applications on the web and mobile marketplaces. While topic and task specific game experiences have been developed, especially in the K-12 curriculum, a general methodology for designing and developing games for adult education is missing. For designing game experiences that can be systematically applied to the various aspects of acquisitions training, we have started developing a methodology that involves the design of a suite of games with different mechanics that provide affordances for learning specific types of content. Our methodology also carefully considers that players have preferences for certain types of games and challenges. Targeting an ensemble of games with different mechanics is an inclusive approach that appeals to a range of different play styles to support the primary pedagogical purpose. In this paper, we first describe some of the theoretical foundations of game design, player modeling, and analysis of existing games. We then present two prototype games, an escape room that incorporates puzzles from content from the Federal Acquisitions Regulations (FAR) manual related to protest risk and a city building tower-defense for contingency contracting interactive scenario generation.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 18, 2022
- Accession Number
- AD1187918
Entities
People
- Daniel J. Finkenstadt
- Rob Handfield
Organizations
- Naval Postgraduate School
- North Carolina State University