Play to Learn: from Serious Games to just Games

Play to Learn: from Serious Games to just Games

Play to Learn: from Serious Games to just Games

Andrea Franceschini, Antonio Rodà

Abstract

"Games have been used for a few decades in research, formal edu- cation, and training of children and adults, and digital games are no strangers to educational uses. After all, everyone likes to play games, so it should stand to reason that educational digital games are going to be a hit. Unfortunately, this is not the case. In fact, educational digital games are often criticized for being too focused on educational content and not enough on engaging, challenging, and entertaining players. Making games for entertainment is diffi-cult and requires multidisciplinary expertise. Making educational games that are engaging and entertaining is also difficult and re- quires additional input from educators and domain experts, and rig-orous evaluation methodologies, all of which must revolve around the players. In this position article, we introduce the early stage “EduGames: Play to Learn” research project aimed at supporting the public in acquiring Critical and Computational Thinking skills to tackle the problem of detecting misinformation, and supporting the game development and research communities in creating and eval-uating games that are entertaining and educational. As part of this project, we call for more, and more structured, synergy between academia, educators, and the game development industry."

Reference

Franceschini, A., & Rodà, A. (2023, September). Play to learn: From serious games to just games. ACM Digital Library. https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3582515.3609525

Keywords

Digital Games, Video Games, Serious Games