Bridging Research and Game Development: A Learning Games Design Model for Multi-Game Projects

Background

Educational games are fundamentally different from games created to “entertain.” While most game developers want educational games to be entertaining to attract and retain the target audience, these games are meant to create lasting behavior or knowledge change that will outlive the gaming experience. Yet, there is an explicit concern that efforts to promote effective design models for creating educational video games are lacking (Bjork & Holopainen, 2005; Shafer et al., 2005). As Salen and Zimmerman (2006) mentioned, game designers or design teams have unique processes to elaborate video games; however, little is offered in the literature regarding instructional design models for creating video games with educational purposes (Watson, 2007), or what literature calls serious games (Kankaanranta & Neittaanmaki, 2009), epistemic games (Shafer et al., 2005), or instructional games (Hirumi et al., 2010a). This may be because the design of these types of games is a complex process (Gunter et al., 2008; Hirumi et al., 2010b; Murphy et al., 2011). While game designers or design teams offer distinctive approaches to video game development, the relevance of an iterative design process in video game creation is undeniable (Adams & Rollings, 2007; Bates, 2004; Salen & Zimmerman, 2004, 2006).