Educational Serious Games Design

Abstract

Serious games are defined as games in which learning has priority over entertainment. While the entertainment industry is characterized by an established game design paradigm, the foregrounding of learning in serious games creates new demands. The design of effective serious games requires the pooling of expertise from both game design professionals and learning sciences professionals. One of the main problems the field of serious game design faces concerns the disconnect between game design and learning design. Several serious game design models have been proposed to bridge this gap. As these models have not been systematically reviewed, their contribution is not known. The present chapter presents the state of the art for the field of serious game design and outlines five principal challenges. Next, 11 serious game design models are briefly introduced and reviewed. It is concluded that the degree to which the models meet the five challenges varies and that the field of serious game design is in a pre-paradigm state.