Web-Based Career Simulation Game for Career Path Exploration Among Informatics and Computer Engineering Education Students

Muhammad Hamam (Institut Prima Bangsa)

Journal of General Education and Humanities
Vol. 5 No. 4 (2026): August

This study aims to design and develop a web-based career simulation game as an interactive career exploration medium for students of Informatics Engineering Education. The study was motivated by students' limited understanding of information technology (IT) career pathways in Indonesia and the lack of contextual and engaging career exploration media. A preliminary study involving 51 students from two cohorts revealed that 70.6% had not yet decided on a career path, while 82.4% had never used a career simulation game. The development process adopted the Game Development Life Cycle (GDLC) methodology, which consists of six stages: Initiation, Pre-production, Production, Testing, Beta Release, and Release. The game was developed as a web-based application using a branching narrative system that simulates four career pathways (civil servant teacher, IT entrepreneur, postgraduate academic, and industry practitioner) through 46 interactive scenes and more than 120 decision points. Its main features include a multidimensional assessment system (interests, work–life balance, income, personal values, and job satisfaction), random events, and a career fit algorithm. Comprehensive evaluation demonstrated excellent results, including 100% validity in alpha testing (30 of 30 test cases passed using the Equivalence Partitioning technique), expert validation of 82.9% (highly feasible), career psychologist validation of 91.3% or 3.65 out of 4.00 (highly valid), average career-path content validation of 81.4% (highly feasible), practicality testing of 77.7% with 26 Informatics Engineering Education students (practical) and a Cronbach's Alpha coefficient of 0.924 (very high reliability), as well as an ISO 9126 evaluation with an overall mean score of 4.42 out of 5.00 (excellent), comprising Functionality (5.00), Usability (3.85), Reliability (4.33), and Efficiency (4.50). The findings indicate that the developed game is both feasible and practical as a career exploration tool for students of Informatics Engineering Education.