Scripted collaboration in serious games for crisis management exercises

• Crises management exercises could for several reasons preferably be carried out as simulations or as serious games. One advantage is the infinite number of replications without additional costs, another is that a virtual crisis management exercise allows the participants to make mistakes without crucial consequences. Several types of virtual exercises with crisis management scenarios could be designed as serious games. However, experiences from earlier virtual exercises are that the participant collaboration should not be taken for granted, and that even well-organised and repeated crisis management training has resulted in poor learning outcomes. An identified technique to stimulate collaboration and to increase learning outcomes in virtual exercises is scripted collaboration. The aim of this study is to explore and discuss the potential of using scripted collaboration in serious games for crisis management training. A literature study was conducted to find and analyse best and worst practices in the use of scripted collaboration. Findings show that scripted collaboration can be successfully applied in various ways. In a deductive thematic analysis, findings were divided into the categories of General collaboration scripts, Conflict scripts, and Role-play scripts. All the identified variations of scripted collaboration seem to have a potential to reinforce virtual crisis management exercises, if they are thoroughly adapted to the actual scenario context.

Subject headings

NATURVETENSKAP  -- Data- och informationsvetenskap -- Systemvetenskap, informationssystem och informatik (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Computer and Information Sciences -- Information Systems (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Scripted collaboration

Crisis management

Virtual crisis management exercises

Serious games

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)