Digital games were first tested by the military as a possible instructional medium because of the similarity found between first-person shooter games and some military objectives (Fong, 2004). Today, GBL has moved beyond the boundary of military training and is increasingly being used for online learning by training organizations and higher education institutions. Because not all games and simulations are created equal, there remain many inconsistencies between what GBLs purported to do and are able to accomplish. While most GBLs claimed to facilitate some sort of ‘learning’ within the virtual (game) environment, learners’ GBL ‘experience’ could range from agent-guided immersive learning to merely exploring an environment where learning is ‘expected’ to occur but lacking any follow-up to verify that learning has indeed occurred.
With such a wide range of offerings, how should stakeholders of learning organizations decide if a certain GBL application is worth its salt? Should s/he focus only on the instructional and learning aspects of the GBL, or should the assessment of learning be factored into the consideration as well? For example, a customer who has paid a travel agent to arrange for a trip has every right to expect to arrive at the right destination. Similarly, a manager who has invested in GBL for his organization need to know if the trainees truly arrived at the intended learning destination as claimed by the game maker.