Serious games in future skills development: A systematic review of the design approaches

Abstract

Serious games offer a magnificent potential for developing future skills along with the 21st-century learning ecosystem. A close nexus between the design and effectiveness of serious games is still argued. In this regard, the current study provides a systematic literature review on serious game design approaches with a special focus on future skill development. A systematic review protocol, including planning, conducting, and reporting stages, is followed to comprehensively interpret the existing studies. Applying quality controls, 32 serious game studies which include a practical serious game design approach are selected. For providing a more systematic analysis, these approaches are then categorized based on the intended outcome of the serious game that the approach aims to facilitate. It is found that 8 (25%) of these design approaches support at least one future skills, among which problemsolving as well as collaboration and teamwork are the most commonly supported ones. It is also discovered that clear goals and interactivity, used in 6 (75%) and 5 (63%) of the 8 design approaches respectively, are the most commonly implemented game design elements. Considering the significant literature gap on the implementation of serious games for future skills development, this study consequently provides valuable insights for the game designers, software developers, educational technology researchers, and engineering educators in various domains.

The eLuna mixed-reality visual language for co-design of narrative game-based learning trails

“…extensions have yielded a distinction between real and virtual elements and have, for hubs and tasks, identified the need for the distinction of mixed elements alongside the two former ones, extensions that have also been proposed. In their systematic review of future skills development in a serious game, Gurbuz and Celik (2022) identify 32 studies in which a framework, model, or methodology is selected. Visiting these 32 studies shows that none of them targets mixed reality by referencing real-world elements as distinct parts of the game-based learning experience.…”

“…Arnab et al (2015) point to a general lack of methodologies and tools for the design, analysis, and assessment of game-based learning and propose the Learning Mechanics-Game Mechanics (LM-GM) model of predefined game mechanics and pedagogical elements from game studies and learning theories. After exploring 165 papers on planning, designing, and implementing learning attributes and game mechanics, Lameras et al (2017) stress the need for pedagogically driven and inclusive processes in game-based learning design, which is further enforced by Gurbuz and Celik (2022), who in a systematic literature review on game-based learning design uncovers 2,466 articles spanning 20 years, of which only 32 provide a design approach with specific steps in form of a method, framework, or model. Carvalho et al (2015) acknowledge that there are several models, frameworks, and methods for the design and analysis of game-based learning, but that these, however, focus on high-level aspects and requirements and do not help understand how the games can be concretely satisfied.…”

An Empirical Study on the Influence of Mobile Games and Mobile Devices for Contemporary Students' Education and Learning Behavior

“…In the United States, the Department of Comparative Media Studies and the Learning Science and Technology Laboratory of Microsoft Research Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology have jointly carried out the Games-to-Teach project. The successful development of this project has provided substantial support for future researchers on educational games, injecting new vitality into the development of educational games (Gurbuz & Celik, 2022). Foreign countries have paid attention to primary school children's games earlier.…”

How can a foundation be outlined for a successful serious game to increase reading engagement

“…We used this model outlining the foundation for the creation of the serious game. There are already many approaches with suggestions on how to design serious games for educational purposes [43][44][45][46][47]. In O'Neil et al [43, pp.…”