Serious Player

Per Backlund holds a PhD from Stockholm University in Computer Science and is currently a senior lecturer at University of Skövde, Sweden. He is currently managing the InGaMe Lab (Interactive Game Media Laboratory) research group which is focusing on the fields of computer games and other interactable media. He has worked on different serious game projects within different application areas such as training, education and rehabilitation (health field). He is also the coordinator of the study programme of a recent Master degree in Serious Game at University of Skövde. He has kindly accepted to answer to my questions about it during an interview.

Simon Bachelier: First of all, thank you very much for accepting to answer to this interview.  The summary above is short and I’m sure there is plenty of things I forgot to tell about you, so what about a second informal introduction by yourself? What kind of interest lead you to study games for “serious purposes”?

Per Backlund: After I finished my PhD in 2004 I was in a position to choose what to do. I had good contacts with some of my colleagues who had just started to organize research about computer games. As our university had run study programmes in computer game development for a couple of years it was a good situation to do a real commitment to research within that area. At that time I had not done any research having anything to do with computer games. I had an interest as a consumer and parent so my thought was: are these possible to combine? My background is in information systems and to my mind a serious game (or any game for that matter) can be seen as an advanced information system. Hence it’s actually the case that moving to serious games has been a way for me to both broaden and deepen my filed of research.

SB : The InGaMe Lab was officially founded in january 2007 at University of Skövde and is currently formed by 17 interdisciplinary specialists (including 9 PhD). How many people were involved in this project at the beginning and what area or domain did they come from? Why did they decide to create this research group?

PB : Three colleagues and I started already in 2004. However, we had to educate ourselves and build sufficient lab facilities before we were allowed to call ourselves a research group. There were already people doing research within computer games but these activities were more on an individual basis. One of our professors in artificial intelligence was able to find funding for a project to build a game lab and that became the start of what would later become InGaMe Lab. One of the interesting things about computer games is that they can form a truly interdisciplinary field of research. Just look at our background. My colleagues come from cognitive science, computer science and database systems; and my background is in information systems. One other colleague comes from film and media- He is actually the only one of us who did his PhD about games. Then there are others who all find games interesting from their respective field of research. Some examples are social psychology and pedagogy. I think that is one of the things that are good about our group. We all bring different competencies to study the subject of computer games from different angles. In research you most often end up working with people who do the same things that you do and come from the same background. The nice thing about InGaMe Lab is that we don’t have that much overlap. And I think that is one of the things that attract people to the group.


SB : We can find different definition of what is a “serious game”, but a consensus in this young industry seem to stick to “a game designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment” (Source: Wikipedia). Am I right if I say that you have also worked on a serious game definition? Could you share with us your vision and idea of the serious games?

PB : At the moment we like to be pretty open minded about our definition of serious games. We simply define it as: games that engage the user, and contribute to the achievement of a defined purpose other than pure entertainment (whether or not the user is consciously aware of it). A game’s purpose may be formulated by the user her/himself or by the game’s designer, which means that also a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) game, used for non-entertainment purposes, may be considered a serious game.

However, there is also the aspect of using game technology for some purpose beyond entertainment, typically visualization. When we meet people from industry it seems that this is a very common opinion but we really want to add the dimension of play. If you think about it, playing is a very powerful way of learning both with humans and animals. A kitten looks really cute when it plays but in practice it is training to become a lethal hunter. To summarize, we are really interested in all these aspects: game technology, COTS games, adapted and modified COTS games as well as specifically designed serious games; or any combination of them.


SB : Here we arrive to the new Master degree in serious game at University of Skövde. Serious games are pretty hot topic these last years but there is still a need to define the “genre” and find true specialist in this domain. What are the reasons that lead to the creation of a new Master degree? Why did you create it?

PB : We have a lot of talented game developers among our students and we think that serious games may actually be a possibility for them to broaden their competence and find a place in the game business. Apart from being an interesting field of research we also think of serious games as an emerging business opportunity for game developers. This is also the reason that we offer courses in business development and entrepreneurship (currently these courses are only in Swedish, foreign students will take alternative courses in computer science) in the study programme. So, serious games are really interesting from both the academic and business aspects.


SB : Currently, it’s possible to find information on the webpage of the Master degree but if a non-swedish student want to get more details in english about the programme, is there any email to contact? For instance, I’m curious about what is behind the title of “Serious Games Research and Development”? And the course named “Project in Informatics with a specialisation in serious games”?

PB : Concerning the two courses. The research and development course is a series of seminars about current research in the field of serious games. The students will read a set of scientific articles in order to become acquainted to the field and then they will write a “position paper” to formulate an area of interest which may be further researched in, for example, a thesis project. The project course is a more practical one. You will work in a small team together with two or three other students to develop a game prototype for a client.

Some examples of projects so far are: training games for fire fighters (client: Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency); a game about the Old Testament (client: the Church of Sweden); an exergame about Tae Kwon Do (client: a Tae Kwon Do organization in Sweden); a game about learning the Kanji (client: a small firm which designs language training). One important aspect of the course is to learn to work together with a client to analyze their needs and provide an example of a solution. If you are looking for more informations, you may find some relevant material on the Master webpage presentation or the InGaMe Lab page. Further questions can be directed to me (per[dot]backlund[at]his[dot]se).


SB : What are the prerequisites (skills, knowledge or/and diploma) for a student who would like to join this master degree? Is there any restriction or selection process to join it?

PB : You will need a bachelor’s degree in computer science or game and media or something equivalent.


SB : As far as I know, you currently have some international students in your Master degree. Are some courses in swedish?

PB : This year we have two Turkish students. Our courses are in English with two exceptions (business development and entrepreneurship). Foreign students will replace these with optional courses in computer science, research methodology or academic writing in English. In that sense the international version of the study programme is more research oriented whereas the Swedish version is somewhat business oriented.


SB : The courses seem especially to be focused on Informatics and Computer Science (applied to serious game). Apparently, this degree is not designed to train students to be “serious game designers”, or am I wrong? What kind of specialists will you have at the end of the year?

PB : We find a background in game design, media sciences or computer science suitable for the study programme. The courses cover both the practical angle of serious games (for example the project course) as well as the academic/research aspect (for example the research and development course). Depending on your background you will be able to take on different roles in a serious games project. For example, if you are a designer you will broaden your competence to apply game design to a variety of fields such as training and educational games. So, from a practical point of view I think that there will be opportunities in corporate training and similar areas. We have also had interesting meetings with representatives from museums. They have to target a new audience and competences from game design and visualization may be of interest to them. With respect to research, there is more and more research within serious games throughout Europe and the world. In the last call for EU funded research the term serious games was actually used explicitly.


SB : This master degree is probably the first of its kind in Europe, is there a particular reason that it has emerged in Sweden at University of Skövde? How is the video game market in Sweden? What about the serious game market?
PB : We have a pretty big video game market in Sweden.  A lot of talented people working in both small Swedish and international studios. I think it will be a growing area for some time to come. Serious games is a complement to the entertainment game market. There are other opportunities and other types of customers. As I said earlier, the corporate training market is expected to grow.


SB : A last and personal question before to end this interview: do you play games, and if you do, what kind of games do you play?

PB : I have always been a fan of games involving words. All varieties of Scrabble and similar games.


SB : To end on a pun, you are a serious player too !

PB : Indeed !


Photos courtesy of Per Backlund and the InGaMe Lab.

*** A french version of this interview would be soon available in order to be published in a newspaper, blog platform or specialised magazine. If you are interested to edit and publish it, please contact me at (sim[dot]bachelier[at]gmail[dot]com) ***