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South East Asia’s video games market represents approximately 4% of global consumption. However, the region’s global growth rate of video games is the fastest compared to any other regions in the world (MDEC, 2015). This tremendous enlargement of the game market in South East Asia truly offers immense opportunities for the industry to exploit, including the education field. Generation-Y is known as the generation born between year 1980 and 2000. This generation is born into technology and often knows more about the digital world than their teachers and parents (Meier & Crocker, 2010). Today, they spend most of their time playing digital games which is enabled by the rapid growth in internet access and ownership of Information Communication and Technology (ICT) devices. Audio and video, film and television, games, Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are the new ways of educating students nowadays. A clear understanding of the capabilities and shortcomings of video games in the education field helps in the design or development of potential games to meet the demands of its users.
For the past 40 years, many significant studies have proven that computer games have become a favourable past time activity and lately, serious gaming has been found to impact people’s attitude, behaviour, skill acquisition and learning, thus attracting the interest of developers and researchers (Boyle et al., 2016; Khenissi et al., 2016; Raybourn, 2014; Vanisri & Roslina, 2015). Serious games can include role-playing experiences, social processes, immersive simulations for the exploration of interpersonal development, diplomacy, adaptive thinking, combat tactics, emergency response, governance, health, education, management, logistics, and leadership (Raybourn, 2014). Its ease-to-use, improved collaboration, innovation and production, the transformation from conventional educational methods to modern educational methods, contemporary software programmes, distance learning, the virtual learning environment and the increase of computer-based games for learning are the few factors that have led to the interest of utilising computer games, video games or serious games for learning (Khenissi et al., 2016).
Learning history has always been perceived as boring and static, and has traditionally emphasised on the memorisation of historical facts and chronological sequences of events (Angeli & Tsaggari, 2016). Furthermore, teaching history only focuses on information delivery without connections to our real life; thus, causing history to be unfairly promoted as a “death” subject. Nevertheless, history is vital as a learning subject for youngsters in order for them to understand national, political, social, religious and economic problems. Currently, the subject of history is listed as a compulsory pass subject in the Malaysian secondary level examinations. Since the immersive technologies such as the virtual world and augmented reality have been used in cultural heritage learning for the public, this is a great opportunity to motivate users to learn or gain knowledge in this way rather than receiving information passively. These technologies may enable students to visualise historical events and attract them to learn while playing the VR or AR games. The rewards system such as the unlocking of content and the gaining of experience points can increase their motivation to learn. This method has been practiced in museums, exhibitions, books and visual content (Mortara et al., 2014).