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The purpose of this paper is to review the concepts of “fun and play” and propose a preliminary model that suggests potential benefits for quantitatively/qualitatively rating serious games and simulations associated with corporate and university game-based learning (GBL).

A relevant literature review was executed to locate significant references to fun and play, assessment of GBL, and the pattern for integrating those elements with knowledge mobilization (KMb). A repertory grid method (RGM) was used to propose a preliminary model.

The proposed FUNIFICATION Model will be useful as a foundation for further evaluation of GBL environments.

Additional rationalization of the proposed model and applying it to actual games with focus groups as the observers would provide additional validity to the new model.

A threshold for fun involved in serious games and simulations would provide a quantitative/qualitative measure for playability of serious games and simulations. The FUNIFICATION Factor would feed into a KMb model for acquiring, codifying, disseminating, and making knowledge actionable, either within academic, corporate, or public sector environments.

The range of assessment models for GBL is evident from the literature review, and value could be derived in building an evaluation model based upon the RGM to identify a FUNIFICATION Factor for serious games and simulations.

This paper aims to describe how a novice to game design pushed theory about what makes a good game.

The game in question was developed in Twine for an introductory undergraduate course in interactive media.

It featured very little player agency, which ironically served to give players a richer experience.

That a novice could create something deeply personal that butted against conventional game design guidelines highlights the importance of opening game design up to as broad an audience as possible.

The first paper in this series explored the effects of the tor‐learner relationship on learners' feelings, learning and interest during management learning events.

This paper aims to propose an integrated use of balanced scorecard (BSC), data envelopment analysis (DEA) and game theory approach as an enhanced performance measurement technique to determine and rank the importance of manufacturing indicators of a steel company as a real case study.

An efficiency change ratio is defined to examine the characteristic function of each coalition which is super-additive. Then, the Shapley value index is used as the solution of the cooperative game to determine the importance of the BSC indicators of the company and rank order them.

The results reveal that “profitability rate” is the most important BSC indicator, whereas “customer satisfaction” is the least significant one. The ranking order of the importance of all BSC indicators makes it possible for the senior managers of the organization to realize the importance of each index separately and to improve the profitability and the number of customers by presenting programs according to the budget and time constraints.

The main contribution of this paper lies in the adoption of a game theory approach to performance measurement in the industrial sector that determines and ranks the importance of manufacturing indicators.

This paper aims to address some security issues in open systems such as service‐oriented applications and grid computing. It proposes a security framework for these systems taking a trust viewpoint. The objective is to equip the entities in these systems with mechanisms allowing them to decide about trusting or not each other before starting transactions.

In this paper, the entities of open systems (web services, virtual organizations, etc.) are designed as software autonomous agents equipped with advanced communication and reasoning capabilities. Agents interact with one another by communicating using public dialogue game‐based protocols and strategies on how to use these protocols. These strategies are private to individual agents, and are defined in terms of dialogue games with conditions. Agents use their reasoning capabilities to evaluate these conditions and deploy their strategies. Agents compute the trust they have in other agents, represented as a subjective quantitative value, using direct and indirect interaction histories with these other agents and the notion of social networks.

The paper finds that trust is subject to many parameters such as the number of interactions between agents, the size of the social network, and the timely relevance of information. Combining these parameters provides a comprehensive trust model. The proposed framework is proved to be computationally efficient and simulations show that it can be used to detect malicious entities.

The paper proposes different protocols and strategies for trust computation and different parameters to consider when computing this trust. It proposes an efficient algorithm for this computation and a prototype simulating it.

An original concept for a Web‐based role play “SurfingGlobalChange” is proposed on the basis of multi‐year interdisciplinary teaching experience and constructivist pedagogy. Underlying didactic orientation is towards self‐guided learning, acquiring socially compatible “competence to act” in a globalised world, self‐optimising social procedures inside teams, process‐orientation and peer‐review instead of teacher’s review. Participating students find themselves in an argumentative battle where they put their marks at stake. A comparison with similar games highlights the increased level of responsibility attributed to and expected from learners using this kind of “digital game‐based learning”.

There is growing evidence that serious games can be an effective tool in social marketing programmes. Although multiple (serious) game attribute frameworks exist, there is limited knowledge about which game attributes are applicable for sensitive social marketing issues. This research aims to fill this gap by compiling a taxonomy of game attributes for serious games based on the existing literature and investigating which of the game attributes users prefer in the context of an alcohol programme targeted at adolescents.

Three serious games were administered to a sample of adolescents as part of a larger trial. Game feedback data from 640 participants are coded and compared using the synthesised classification taxonomy of reward-based and meaningful game attributes.

Meaningful game attributes are more frequently preferred than reward game attributes across all three serious games.

This study examined serious games targeting only one specific context (alcohol) in one market segment (Australian adolescents) on one gaming platform (online).

This study proposes that meaningful game attributes are more important than reward game attributes when designing serious games for (alcohol) social marketing programmes. Nevertheless, social marketers must also recognise that reward-based game attributes are important attributes, as they are essential for making and motivating gameplay.

This research is the first social marketing study that provides insight into game attributes which are preferred by users of serious games or gamified technology in social marketing programmes.