Serious Games as an Engaging Medium on Building Energy Consumption: A Review of Trends, Categories and Approaches

Serious games, as an engaging medium on energy consumption, have recently become more popular, as they present an educational mechanism to engage end-users. A novel application of serious games in engaging and educating end-users has been validated during the last years. However, there is little research focusing on the review of its development trends, categories and approaches. The proposed paper reviews serious games as an engaging medium for building energy consumption. The research focuses on the role of energy-consumption awareness-related education in motivating end-users to save energy and make informed decisions to change energy-related behaviours. This research stresses the approaches to underlining the issue as ascertained from a number of efficiency-related serious games. The investigation suggests the potential impact that serious games can have on changing the domestic practices of householders, in a safe, fun and interactive environment. This would enable householders to investigate alternative ways of meeting energy-consumption targets and realise the limits to their energy-saving potential. It concludes that at present, serious games do not take advantage of the opportunities available in energy monitoring and sub-metering, or real-life energy behaviours. Meanwhile, the existing evaluation framework for the effectiveness of an energy serious game still needs to be further developed. However, active engagement in energy monitoring has contributed to numerous past successes in energy use reduction, and gamification and serious games show great potential for building upon these achievements.