Game-Based Learning Design Patterns

This chapter shares a protocol for reviewing games and documents the process in which it was used by an educational game design team for evaluating existing games to inform the design and development of new games for early algebra. While the design team has used their own learning games design model to develop several games—all of which included some kind of immersive learning and review activity—there has been no documentation provided on the specific processes used to review games as part of that immersion. Observations offer structured means for assessing existing games in a particular space and are thus valuable to identify how best to pursue the alignment of learning objectives with teaching content and game mechanics in the development of educational games.

Development of sandbox components with microservices architecture and design patterns in games

Previous studies have found that educational games (EG) provide immersion, motivation, fun and high level of engagement. Studies also found that EG are able to teach 21 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">st</sup> century skills. Thus, it is worth studying how this form of entertainment can be adapted into our teaching and learning strategies in order to develop our students' motivation and engagement, which is crucial in successful learning. However, designing and development of educational games with authentic learning content while maintaining the fun criteria can be challenging. Hence, a good design methodology and guideline is needed in assisting games development team to design an effective learning game. Our main attention is to produce a framework in educational games design for higher education. This paper analyses and compares a few frameworks available, then suggests a few criteria needed both from game design and pedagogy points of view. Hopefully it will shed some light in educational games design issues for higher education students.

This research aims to develop an Android-based educational game to introduce Indonesian culture to Madrasah Ibtidaiyah students. Following the Research and Development methodology with ADDIE model, the study comprises three key stages: 1) analysis of students' and teachers' needs, 2) development of the educational game, and 3) testing the product's effectiveness. The study involved test subjects from twenty schools in Lamongan Regency. Data were collected using questionnaires and interviews, and data analysis encompassed both qualitative and quantitative methods. The material expert validation, media validation, and validation by learning experts collectively resulted in a 'very good' categorization. The educational game's effectiveness was substantiated by a t-test (tvalue &gt; ttable) and practicality tests, revealing a high interest level of 94.86%. In conclusion, this research significantly contributes to the development of an Android-based educational game for exploring Indonesian culture.

Among the many commendable creations presented by game developers, the design of game mechanics generally shares common components. This observation can also be validated by using some less impressive works as counterexamples; however, there is currently a lack of comprehensive summarization of these systems. Through analysis, this paper extracts the game mechanic design patterns present in these successful games. The paper explores the practical application of a game design pattern that originates from a core game mechanism and progressively generates usable sub-mechanisms. This pattern involves selecting a specific core gameplay element and introducing auxiliary mechanisms to expand its dimensions. Through a systematic exploration of various combinations and interactions, this approach aims to create diverse sub-mechanisms that enrich gameplay and level design. The paper discusses the benefits and challenges of this design pattern and provides illustrative examples.

We draw on years of ethnographic investigation into the disaster response practices of fire emergency response, urban search and rescue, and incident command to inform the design of games. Our objective is to support training disaster responders, yet our findings apply to general game design. We identify critical components of disaster response practice, from which we develop game design patterns: emergent objectives, developing intelligence, and collaborative planning. We expect that, in implementing these patterns, designers can engage players in disaster-response-style planning activities. To support the design patterns, we survey exemplar games, through case studies. The paper contributes a set of game design patterns that support designers in building games that engage players in planning activities.

Research in Serious Games (SG), as a whole, faces two main challenges in understanding the transition between the instructional design and actual game design implementation and documenting an evidence-based mapping of game design patterns onto relevant pedagogical patterns. From a practical perspective, this transition lacks methodology and requires a leap of faith from a prospective customer in the ability of a SG developer to deliver a game that will achieve the desired learning outcomes. A series of workshops were thus conducted to present and apply a preliminary exposition though a purpose-processing methodology to probe various SG design aspects, in particular how serious game design patterns map with pedagogical practices. The objective was to encourage dialogue and debate on core assumptions and emerging challenges to help develop robust methods and strategies to better SG design and its interconnectedness with pedagogy.KeywordsGame mechanicsLearning mechanicsLudo-pedagogy mappingPedagogically-driven game designPatterns

Gamification is the use of game design elements to enhance the teaching-learning process and turn a regular, non-game activity into a fun, engaging game. Simultaneously, serious games are proposed as an efficient and enjoyable way of conducting cognitive assessment, as they combine a serious intention with game rules and targets. In this scenario, game engines have emerged as information technologies for serious games and educational games development; however, this development has usually been performed without a guide to identifying game attributes to be present in the game. To address this gap, we present an analysis of the most used game engines to identify game and learning attributes supported for serious and educational games development. Findings from this analysis provide a guide of the most popular game engines that offer the largest support for game attributes, which were also classified by game categories.

Design patterns are a common strategy employed in software development to promote several aspects of software quality, including code maintainability. Game development is a multidisciplinary field that includes not only software development but also animations, interactivity, sound design and others. Given the short deadlines in which game developers commonly operate, on top of the intrinsic complexity of the field itself, code maintainability is often overlooked by game developers. Hence, this work investigates how design patterns can impact the code maintainability of games. First, we performed a review to understand how (and which) design patterns can be applied to different game mechanics. Next, we selected two small games and refactored the code by applying design patterns to some of the games’ mechanics. By leveraging static analysis to assess the games’ code maintainability before and after the application of the design patterns, we observed an overall code maintainability improvement of 5.5%. The preliminary results indicate the potential to use design patterns as a strategy to improve code maintainability in the context of game development.

Object oriented design patterns (DP) are meant to provide a common structure for solving common software development problems. Applying those patterns is expected to improve the software systems maintainability, comprehensibility, and provide a common language for developers to understand and effectively communicate. However, this was not always the case, where some studies have shown that using design patterns may lead to a system harder to maintain and understand and more error prone; as compared to same systems without the use of design patterns. This variation is referred to the features of the system on hand, and the experience of the developers who are capable to know what design patterns to use and when. Considering the video game development, the use of software design pattern is still at low scale, and still; there is no recipe on what and when to use design patterns. In the meantime, there are different game design frameworks that define different aspects which need to be considered when developing a game. In this paper, we propose a framework that integrates some creational and behavioral DP, with a specific game design framework. In this way, we claim that the developers will have some hints on what DP to use with the main game aspects. This framework is suitable for games which can be developed after the first course of game design, regardless of the game engine used for development. The framework can be extended with more DP, for larger scale and more sophisticated game.

This paper presents teachers training to design, develop, and apply educational games and simulations in their class. The development of training teachers to design, develop, and apply educational games and simulations in their class in the era of 21st century and educational reform during 2006–2016 are discussed. Pedagogical knowledge and application as well as techniques of design, development, and application of educational games are offered. Benefit of games and simulations from teachers’ products is revealed. The development and application of educational games and simulations may be one of efficient tools in the 21st Century where teachers need to integrate language, culture, innovation and information technology for their teaching.

Beginning Android C++ Game Development introduces general and Android game developers like you to Android's powerful Native Development Kit (NDK). The Android NDK platform allows you to build the most sophisticated, complex and best performing game apps that leverage C++. In short, you learn to build professional looking and performing game apps like the book's case study, Droid Runner. In this book, you'll learn all the major aspects of game design and programming using the Android NDK and be ready to submit your first professional video game app to Google Play and Amazon Appstore for today's Android smartphones and tablet users to download and play. The techniques contained in this book include building a game engine, writing a renderer, and building a full game app with entities, game levels and collisions. As part of the tutorial you'll also learn about inserting perspectives using cameras and including audio in your game app.

Games development brings fun into the software engineering curriculum, but it is a practical activity that educators cannot teach in traditional lecture-based environments. Including pedagogical aspects of problem-based, cooperative, blended and experiential learning is necessary to achieve a high learning experience.In this paper we describe and evaluate a block course in which we ask students with almost no mobile application development experience to create games in just two weeks. We offer the course in two different modes, for beginners who learn games development, and for tutors who help us in the organization of the course and in the teaching activities.Apart from games development and game design, students learn modeling, design patterns and software configuration management. They practice soft skills in team work, present their games to their classmates using Pecha Kucha and publish their games into the App Store. Our evaluations show that students appreciate the great learning experience.

While research has investigated the application of computational methodologies in undergraduate biology education, those approaches require students certain backgrounds from multiple disciplines. Recently, game design and development for education has moved into different fields of science, including biology. Several multi-media interactive products have been developed to simulate biological mechanisms and can be used by undergraduate students. However these approaches focus on students as game users and, not as game developers. Here, we propose an innovative approach to involve game design and development into undergraduate biology classroom. The approach assumes no additional background, and aims to increase engagement in the complexities of the course material through the process of game design and development. We initialized a case study that systematically combines a game application-driven project into genetics teaching. In the pedagogical experiment, undergraduate biology and computer science students designed educational games to enhance the speed and depth of comprehension of both biological and software engineering concepts. The result of this study shows that the reinforcement effects of biological education games apply differently on students with or without biology backgrounds.

A serious game needs to combine a number of different aspects to help the end user in reaching the desired effects. This requires incorporating a broad range of different aspects in the design, stemming from a broad range of different fields of expertise. For designers, developers, researchers, and other stakeholders it is not straightforward how to organize the design and development process, to make sure that these aspects are properly addressed. In this chapter we will discuss a number of ways of organizing the design and development process and various models that support specific design decisions during this process, concluding with a discussion of design patterns for serious games.