About the research

The study

This site is the practitioner edition of Accounting for Values in Serious Game Design — a PhD thesis by Dale Linegar (RMIT University, School of Accounting, Information Systems and Supply Chain, 2026; ORCID 0000-0002-4291-5554), available open access in the RMIT Research Repository. The research asked one overarching question: How do we account for the values embodied in serious games?

The study took a qualitative, phenomenological approach. It combined in-depth, semi-structured interviews with award-nominated serious game developers — structured as walkthroughs of their games using the Values at Play heuristic — with artefact analysis and the researcher's own reflexive accounts from more than two decades in the serious games industry. Interview data was coded against the Values at Play heuristic, the fifteen Game Elements, and Boltanski and Thévenot's six worlds of worth, alongside inductive themes that emerged from the data (most notably psychological safety).

Participants (quoted here as P1–P10) built games spanning medical VR training, physiotherapy, driver education, space exploration, conservation, youth social services, disability services, early childhood clinical assessment, agricultural and mining training, and play-based workshops. All participants and projects are anonymised, as required by the study's ethics approval.

Standing on shoulders

The framework integrates and extends two seminal works, both of which deserve your attention in full:

• Mary Flanagan & Helen Nissenbaum (2014), Values at Play in Digital Games, MIT Press — the source of the Discovery–Implementation–Verification heuristic and the fifteen Game Elements.
• Luc Boltanski & Laurent Thévenot (2006), On Justification: Economies of Worth, Princeton University Press — the source of the six worlds of worth.

This site adapts both for the specific realities of serious games: compulsory use, institutional influence, expectations of evidence, and real-world consequences.

Publications from this research

Two peer-reviewed papers by the author sit alongside the thesis and are included in it as appendices:

• Linegar, D., Vesty, G. and Tsahuridu, E. Serious games, stealth interventions and accounting ethics. Games for Change Asia-Pacific, 2, pp. 179–202.
• Linegar, D. and Vesty, G. (2024, July). Accounting for Psychological Safety in Serious Game and Simulation Design. In International Simulation and Gaming Association Conference (pp. 46–68). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.

Limitations, honestly stated

The sample was drawn from peer-recognised practitioners in a limited range of projects and national contexts (largely Australia and New Zealand). Failed projects, less visible studios and player perspectives are under-represented, and the researcher is a practitioner in the field — a strength for interpretation, but a positionality worth knowing. Treat the findings as transferable where similar conditions apply, not as universal laws.

License & citation

Site content is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0. To cite the underlying research: Linegar, D. (2026). Accounting for Values in Serious Game Design [PhD thesis, RMIT University]. Read the full thesis.

Key works cited across the guide pages are listed in the references.