Research Background and Motivations
With the popularity of electronic games, mobile educational games have been widely developed (Rahimi et al., 2021). However, learners seem to be prone to slack psychology, which is related to their learning behavior in educational games (Hines et al., 2021). Mobile educational games combine learning with games to make learners learn knowledge while playing games (Shute et al., 2021). Learning in the 21st century should be relaxed and pleasant, which can be combined with entertainment to enable learners to carry out learning activities in a relaxing atmosphere (Robert, 2020). Although educational games have broken the traditional learning mode, their development speed is far behind that of other electronic games (Schmidt et al., 2020; Zheng, Liu, Ni, et al., 2021).
The main audience of educational games initially developed is children (Nizam & Law, 2021). The original educational game aims to improve children’s interest in learning by enriching interesting images and finally improving their map reading ability (Marston et al., 2020). With the progress of mobile devices and social media, the content of educational games is richer, with more audiences from various fields (Havukainen et al., 2020; Harley et al., 2016). For example, with the progress of social media, users have adopted educational games on social platforms, and developers of educational games also start to use some promotional means of “discount after a certain period of clock in” (Jung, 2020). The rapid development of online education in China has led to the emergence of mobile learning payment modes, and more and more users are willing to pay for educational games (Yu et al., 2021; Xiong et al., 2022). However, the user persistence rate of educational games is low. The current research focuses on improving the user experience and triggering user repurchase behavior (Dubé & Dubé, 2021).
Figure 1 shows the basic situation of current mobile educational games. Learners often have slack psychology after learning for some time. Solving this problem is one of the difficulties faced by educational games.
Figure 1. Current situation of educational games
Some achievements have been made in the research on educational games (Ruipérez-Valiente et al., 2021). For example, educational game enterprises have realized the importance of educational entertainment in the digital environment, and many companies have also joined the ranks of studying educational games (Huda & Ramadhan, 2021). However, their application is limited to certain specific subjects and occupations, such as educational games simulating cancer treatment and teaching pharmacology (Shi et al., 2020; Zenggang, Mingyang, et al., 2022; Zenggang, Xiang, et al., 2022). The research and development of existing educational games are mostly carried out in the game enterprise, which is highly commercial (Wang & Han, 2021). Their best-selling degree is lower than the existing educational games due to the improper coordination between educational and game factors. In addition, the development of educational games needs more costs. Considering the profit, many game companies have made no more attempts in this field. Educational games developed by educational institutions often rarely grasp the scale of game factors, and the finished products are more inclined to educational software, so it is difficult to stimulate student learning interests. In educational games research, there are many problems to be solved.