Strategies for Effective Digital Games Development and Implementation

Abstract

Digital technologies have increased the pace of knowledge creation, sharing, and the way in which learning is being undertaken. This chapter considers how Serious Games (SGs) as a digital technology endeavours to support effective lifelong learning. Three fundamental characteristics of the SG ecosystem, namely, game mechanics, interoperability, and assessment, are considered here as strategic elements that impact upon how SGs are to support learning, how they affect the learning environment, and ultimately, the SG development process. A prospective deconstruction of SGs into its pedagogical elements and its game mechanic nodes is presented to make aware the interoperability modus from which topical (domain) frameworks or architectures can be structured and assessed. To this end, the chapter explores the conceptual underpinnings through a case study on the eAdventure platform and argues that the key elements form the foundation for strategic development and implementation of SGs.