These Games Are Serious Business

A graduate course shows how games can reinvent training

Five students sitting around a computer

This is a summary of a story that originally appeared on the Office of Interdisciplinary Programs website.

A new graduate course in Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering is redefining not only how game designers think about the games they produce, but also how medical professionals think about gaming.

Serious Games Design, offered through Duke’s Master of Game Design, Development & Innovation program, immerses students in the creation of games built not for entertainment, but for training, learning and measurable impact. This fall, the course partnered students with clinicians at Duke Health, giving them real clients and real problems — requiring them to deliver functional prototypes by the end of the semester. 

“Using games for training is a great way to tackle topics in a fun, competitive way that is not burdensome. There’s a lot of research that shows it’s a better way to do training,” said instructor Enrique Cachafeiro, who has spent nearly two decades integrating games into education. 

Two student teams tackled high‑stakes training challenges at Duke Children’s Hospital, with games. Transfer Center Tycoon simulates the pressure of handling urgent patient‑transfer calls, complete with interruptions, evolving vitals, and decision‑making under stress. Pick Five, a digital reimagining of a diagnostic reasoning exercise, guides players through a staged patient encounter where they must prioritize the most meaningful questions and tests. 

The class operates like a professional studio. Students manage workflows, meet with stakeholders and test their builds with users. 

For students, the course offers more than technical skills; it provides a sense of purpose. They describe discovering how game design can influence education, medical training and even patient outcomes. “This class really helped resonate the impact game developers can have, not just with entertainment, but with education and medical research,” said student Anlan Jiang.

Cachafeiro envisions the course sparking additional interdisciplinary collaborations from across Duke — engineering, education, sciences, humanities — for future student cohorts. 

For more information on how to spark other interdisciplinary collaborations, go to the Interdisciplinary Programs website.