While this paper looks at the definitions of heuristics and usability as they apply to digital games, its primary focus is expanding the usability dialog into the arena of mobile educational games. Recent discussions of game heuristics have made some useful connections between work completed in the area of heuristics and game design theory. This paper expands the usability dialogue, beginning w...

Games and Educational Games(EGs)! To what extent do they diverge? How game designers approach such apposition? The extensive need for games in outside classrooms demands clarity between EGs through designers’ perspectives. In the Australian context, have witnessed technological advancement, user-expectation, use of within various contexts, including classroom. transformation technology to adapt...

Mobile learning games have increasingly been topic of educational research with the intention to utilize their manifold and ubiquitous capabilities for learning and teaching. This paper presents a review of current research activities in the field. It particularly focuses is on the educational values serious mobile games provide. The study results substantiate their generally assumed motivation...

Educational software games aim at increasing the students’ motivation and engagement while they learn. However, if software games are targeted to school classrooms they have to be usable and likeable by all students. Usability of virtual reality games may be a problem because these games tend to have complex user interfaces so that they are more attractive. Moreover, if the games acquire an edu...

Educational video games allow for a level of intrinsic motivation and engagement that is not found in other forms of learning. This study determines if students found educational video game play to be a motivating experience and if a relationship existed between student learning styles and levels of motivation. High school psychology students played two short online educational video games and,...

The development of software products in general and educational games in particular is a very demanding process involving costly resources for long periods of time. Evaluating its quality throughout the development lifecycle contributes to the early identification of imperfections and to improved efficiency. In this paper we discuss a set of quality criteria and a method to assess the quality o...

Educational games constitute a major field inside the serious games ecosystem, attempting to educate the players, while entertaining them. Augmented Reality (AR) has found application in educational games, introducing properties that improve gameplay and that potentially produce unique educational affordances. In this study, we present the “Table Mystery” game, an under-development mystery-adve...

While video games are typically labeled either commercial or educational, little has been done to amplify the educational value of popular commercial games. Using data from a pilot study of children playing commercial games we have developed a prototype video game called FormulaT Racing. This game is designed to fit into gaming culture while simultaneously providing an environment that draws on...

The concept of intrinsic fantasy has been considered central to the aim of usefully applying the positive affect of computer games to learning. Games with intrinsic fantasy are defined as having “an integral and continuing relationship with the instructional content being presented”, and are claimed as “more interesting and more educational” than extrinsic fantasy games [1]. Studies of children...