Creating Serious Games by integrating external components in commercial game engines : Propositions and guidelines for future work with serious games

The military industry has come to look at games as means for better looking and cheaper simulations. Altering games and game engines are not necessarily easy and finding a suitable engine is essential to project success. The features and design of an engine must to a large degree overlap that of the project design. Creating ‘systems of systems’ by integrating external components/systems with games is what to a large extent differentiate military serious games from other fields. However, this is not an easy task, as games are not designed with interoperability in mind. This report explain how games and game engines can be used to create military serious games, and by that explain what need to be done to have a game interoperate with external systems, how to interact with the game engine, and give guidelines to the process of evaluating and selecting a game engine. The report also argues that game engines are not always the optimal solution