There's been a fascinating conversation going on at the Serious Games listserv. I asked a question along the lines of: "what do designers of Serious Games need to know? What skills do they need?". This links in to my work in the e-learning mainstream, which attempts to answer these questions for e-learning designers.

The replies have been really useful. I'm going to do a full summary in a few days, but briefy so far it's things like:

• Storytelling skills (including dialogue writing)
• Knowledge of gaming patterns
• Creative thinking skills
• Knowledge of scoring devices and mechanisms

What's come up in the conversation is that the role of e-learning ID/LDs in the design of SGs should, fairly obviously, be to input "learning expertise" into the process; to ensure that the "interleaving" of learning and gaming is effective.

But here's the problem: I'm not convinced that most ID/LDs - I'm talking about the foot-soldiers in the large agencies and the writer/producer/trainers in large organisations, not the bloggers and gurus - really know enough about learning to help much. The skills that the e-learning industry, as currently constituted, has taught these people, centre around client management and content processing, not learning experience design. These people are very highly skilled - don't get me wrong. But they don't know much about learning, because the endless swathes of systems training, product knowledge, procedure and compliance courses don't need learning expertise. Most IDs/LDs can squeeze a manual into a set of powerpoint slides, drag 'n drops and MCQs...but has their work taught them how to change people and improve performance? I don't think so. 

I'll push my point further. Firstly, many types of SG demand that designers shift from a content processing mindset towards one based around experience design. But tools and methodologies in the e-learning mainstream have very widely militated against experience design, in favour of ever more efficient content processing. Most rapid tools, as I've written elsewhere, are aimed at allowing monkeys to write dull rubbish. Again, don't get me wrong: you can use rapid tools to produce fantastically creative stuff, but that's not what they're aimed at. They're efficiency tools, and they've tended to push our already inappropriately skilled IDs/LDs further down the efficiency (as opposed to effectiveness) dead end.

Secondly, a critical problem is that, at least until the last few months, the e-learning industry have been commercially successful. So the feedback that e-learning designers are receiving from clients is "we like you...more of the same please". This is a little different from what many learners are saying, but in the great majority of cases, e-learners are not consulted on their views. A consequence of this dubious success is that I have sometimes observed, when trying to train e-learning designers in sophisticated (i.e. change oriented) learning methods, they are resistant; "our clients don't need this". (OK - but your learners do, and if you just bothered to measure effectiveness, I think your clients' minds would change pretty sharpish). This contrasts strongly with games designers, ad agency "creatives" and other non-e-learning design professionals, who I love working with, not just because of their creativity, but because of their open approach to learning about learning. I was once forced by a senior ad executive to stay behind after a workshop until 2am (no booze involved!) just talking about problem-based learning...

So I think the Serious Games community has to answer some "serious" questions:

• who's going to design the convincing, commercially-viable, performance-oriented SG's of the future? Is it the current generation of e-learning designers?
• how are we going to cultivate these designers? 
• are the e-learning agencies the gateway into SGs? Or are marketing/advertising/design agencies, who tend to be more customer/solution oriented, likely to be more responsive? Or specialist SG agencies, which is the current model? We shall see...