An engine selection methodology for high fidelity serious games

Serious games represent the state-of-the-art in the convergence of electronic gaming technologies with instructional design principles and pedagogies. Whilst the selection criteria for entertainment game engines are often transparent, due to the range of available platforms and engines an emerging challenge is the choice of platform for serious games, whose selection often has substantially different objectives and technical requirements depending upon context and usage. Additionally, the convergence of training simulations with serious gaming, made possible by increasing hardware rendering capacity, is enabling the creation of high-fidelity serious games which challenge existing design and instructional approaches. This paper highlights some of the differences between the technical requisites of high-fidelity serious and leisure games, and proposes a selection methodology based upon these emergent characteristics. The case study of part of a high-fidelity model of Ancient Rome is used to compare aspects of the four different game engines according to elements defined in the proposed methodology.