Standing in the large concourse of Zurich Main Station, Bettina Meier-Bickel looks up at the cheerful, colorful sculpture floating above her. It was created by Niki de Saint Phalle and is commonly known as “The Angel”, but its full name is “L’ange protecteur" (The Guardian Angel). She lowers her gaze to her cell phone, taps on the screen, and looks up again. All around her, people are rushing to catch their train, waiting for someone to arrive, or looking for the stop for the next bus or streetcar. The art historian pockets her phone and heads towards the rear entrance of the station, where another art installation awaits her. Bettina Meier-Bickel is testing a mobile game for which she and her business partner Karin Frei Rappenecker designed the content and which they hope will soon be played by young people on their smartphones.

The game is called “Artspotting” and falls into the genre of serious games. The main target group is schoolchildren, and the game is intended to introduce them to the world of art in a playful way. However, it will also be available to art enthusiasts of all ages.

Serious is popular

As an educational game, “Artspotting” is a typical representative of the serious game genre – software that uses game mechanics and rules to pursue a serious objective. Over the past ten years, this genre has become one of the most important sources of income for the Swiss video game industry. This is due to the fact that most Swiss game developers have not yet managed to tap into the full coffers of the entertainment game sector. While blockbuster games such as “Minecraft”, “Fortnite”, or the “FIFA” football game series rake in billions around the globe, the Swiss game developer scene is still very low key. Only the “Giants Software” studio based in the small town of Schlieren has managed to create an international big seller with its “Farming Simulator”. Swiss studios with a global reach can thus be counted on one hand. This is not due to a lack of skills – after all, Zurich is home to one of the world’s most renowned game design schools – but rather to scarce financial resources: There is hardly any money to be made on the small Swiss market, and the competition in the international arena is fierce. Making it there requires a great deal of self-confidence, but in Switzerland, video games are still accorded a dubious social reputation.

Not so serious games. They have proven themselves as extremely useful tools in medicine, for example in the field of rehabilitation: Arduous and repetitive therapy exercises are more fun when they are performed in the context of a game. One of the first serious games to utilize this effect was “Gabarello”: Developed by the Department of Game Design at the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), the game motivates walking-impaired patients to perform walking exercises on the “Lokomat” gait training robot. The “Lokomat” controls a game character in a strange world full of surprises that can be discovered by walking around. “The acceptance of serious games has grown strongly over the past ten years,” says Ralf Mauerhofer, one of the co-founders of Koboldgames.

The acceptance of serious games has grown strongly over the past ten years

Benefits for business and research

Serious games have also established themselves in the field of learning and therapy. “School educationalists have recognized the benefits of digital learning games,” Ralf Mauerhofer says. Their insight: It is easier to retain knowledge that is taught in a playful fashion. This is particularly valuable for children: The “Fresh Food Runner” learning game, for example, teaches schoolchildren about the seasonality of fruits and vegetables. However, the focus is not only on young people: Another game created by Koboldgames in cooperation with the University of Zurich is called “uFin: The Challenge” – a serious moral game. It is designed to hone the moral awareness of people who are involved in the financial sector. Numerous serious game developers have discovered senior citizens as a target group, helping them, for example, to improve their memory or maintain their fine motor skills. The “Four Seasons” game, for example, uses a pressure-sensitive plate to enhance the gait stability of elderly people.

Last but not least, the benefits of video games have also been recognized in research: Surveys often run the risk of participants unconsciously adapting their responses to suit the researchers’ objectives. This is not the case when responses are provided within the context of a game: People respond more intuitively and directly to questions posed in this way, and as a result, their responses are more genuine.

Disappointments are not uncommon

Funding is also the big issue for Koboldgames. “You simply cannot develop a respectable serious game for less than 50,000 Swiss francs,” Ralf Mauerhofer explains. And developing a game that features a 3D world with high-quality graphics requires at least twice that amount. The most expensive game he was ever involved in, which took several years to develop, cost half a million. This is still a fraction of the budget of blockbuster games, such as “Assassin’s Creed”, which take hundreds of millions to produce. This adventure game is one of the few big-budget games that also contains a serious game element. For example, the first game in the “Assassin’s Creed” series depicted characters, buildings, and clothing from the time of the Crusades in Damascus in a meticulously accurate and largely historically correct manner. Prior to creating the game, its designers delved deep into the history books and studied the events of the time. In the meantime, the “Assassin’s Creed” series has been running for over 15 years, and each game is dedicated to a different historical era. In Switzerland, however, there is a lack of funding for such productions. “This can sometimes cause our clients to be disappointed,” Ralf Mauerhofer says. In particular when, for an investment of just a few tens of thousands or even a hundred thousand Swiss francs, they expect the photo-realistic graphics of a multimillion-dollar game. “A university simply doesn’t have several million to invest in a game,” the game designer says.

Unlike movies or video games for pure entertainment, you cannot build a new audience with such games

“Good developers of serious games know their target audience very well,” says Ralf Mauerhofer from Koboldgames. The target group must also be involved in the development process from a very early stage, he adds. “Without a target audience, a serious game makes no sense.” Unlike movies or video games for pure entertainment, you cannot build a new audience with such games, he explains. The developers of “Artspotting” are also involving their target audience: Very early on, the game was tested by high school students and apprentices. This revealed considerable differences between the age groups. “At 18, you’re at a different point in life than when you’re 15,” Bettina Meier-Bickel says. Therefore, it is not yet entirely clear which age group will respond most favorably to “Artspotting”. But the serious game will definitely be educational – for everyone involved.