Slow serious games, interactions and play: Designing for positive and serious experience and reflection

Proposed herein are slow interactions and gameplay with serious games, referred to as slow serious games. These are slow movements intended to focus attention/concentration, and provide openings and opportunities for reflection, contemplation, and learning. Like devices used in film and theatre, this forms part of an emerging design repertoire of strategies and devices to articulate and manipulate time and space and narrative in interactions and games for the shaping of experience. To illustrate the idea of slow serious interactions and gameplay, the related interaction design, interactive art and game literature is reviewed. Next, devices and strategies for the design and development of slow serious interactions are proposed. Through example, we describe the development of a game to raise awareness of issues and threats affecting ecosystems in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. This includes novel design strategies to engage the player in interaction/play with these issues and threats, and to blend slow and fast interaction and gameplay to stimulate thought and shape experience between positive and serious experience. The design strategies outlined herein can be used to inform design and development of other interactions, games and slow serious games and art games.