We are witnessing a mad rush to pour educational content into games in an ad hoc manner in hopes that player/learners are motivated simply because the content is housed inside a game. A failure to base educational game design on well-established learning and instructional theories increases the risk of the game failing to meet its intended educational goals, and yielding students who are entertained but who have not acquired any academic skills or knowledge. Our review of standalone educational games has shown that they are not always based on sound educational principles and theories. We contend that, if academic learning is to take place, a new design paradigm must be developed. This article discusses the RETAIN design and evaluation model for educational games that was developed to aide in the evaluation of how well academic content is endogenously immersed and embedded within the game's fantasy and story context, promoters transfer of knowledge, and encourages repetitive usage to that content becomes available for use in an automatic way.
In this paper, we propose the technique of cardboard semiotics. We explain the importance of symbolic analysis as a tool for building narrative prototypes in videogames. Borrowing from the participatory design work in the early 1990s, we suggest a means for adapting and extending this work based on the implicit participation of gamers' immediate-level stories (i.e., the gameplay with narrative implications). Our paper first introduces the concept of semiotics and explains how cardboard semiotics can function as an applied technique within the domain of videogame design and development. Next, we propose a theoretical basis for our work using a simple three act narrative structure and explore some basic concepts from narrative game design. Finally, we conclude with some simple examples of how cardboard semiotics might function in a design environment.
In prior work, we proposed the model of cardboard semiotics. The model applies the use of semiotics (the study of signs and symbols and their interpretations) as a conceptual prototyping tool for game story development. In this paper we adapt the theoretical principle of cardboard semiotics towards an engineered formalism for the design of game mechanics. We first provide a brief introduction to video game literacy, a key method of semiotic analysis, and examples of the new approach by looking at its application in the design of Real-Time Strategy (RTS) and FirstPerson Shooter (FPS) games. We then use generalized semiotic grammars, or methods for composing symbolic sentences, to expose the underlying frameworks of popular commercial games to show how games can be re-imagined in other contexts through the semiotic technique of structural analysis.
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