Abstract

Practice Marketing is a serious game designed to teach the introductory principles of marketing to college students. The game was built for McGraw-Hill Higher Education to serve as a learning tool that would support multiple introductory curricula and textbooks. Practice Marketing is the first in a line of games envisioned by McGraw-Hill for multiple higher education subjects that will provide a consistent user experience, look and feel, and common elements. In this chapter, we introduce the design and development process we followed in creating Practice Marketing and summarize some of the lessons we learned in our effort.

Introduction

At Muzzy Lane, we believe that well-designed games offer a compelling medium to give students the means and the vehicle to personally interact with educational content. By designing games in which the core game mechanic reinforces the key learning objectives, as well as by using feedback systems that correlate to valid assessment metrics, serious game developers can provide a better alternative to current methods of instruction. And we know that today’s students – from kindergarten to grad school – are willing to spend hours and hours in front of a console or a computer when they’re playing games they find engaging.