Educational Game Design Fundamentals by Kalmpourtzis, George;

Short description:

This book embarks on a journey to explore the necessary aspects to create games that are both fun and help players learn. It examines the art of educational game design through various perspectives and presents real examples that will help readers make more informed decisions when creating their own games.

Long description:

This book embarks on a journey to explore the necessary aspects to create games that are both fun and help players learn. It examines the art of educational game design through various perspectives and presents real examples that will help readers make more informed decisions when creating their own games. In this way, readers can have a better idea of how to prepare for and organize the design of their educational games, as well as evaluate their ideas through several prisms, such as feasibility or learning and intrinsic values.

This updated new edition includes a wealth of new case studies and perspectives from a diverse global authorship, on a wide range of topics, including: AI in serious games design, the role of Esports in gifted and talented student development, gamified climate change engagement, designing facilitated educational games for the classroom, and much more.

Everybody can become educational game designers, no matter what their technical, artistic or pedagogic backgrounds. This book refers to instructional designers, education professionals and designers of all sorts: from kindergarten to lifelong learning, from corporate training to museum curators and from tabletop or video game designers to theme park creators!

Praise for the first edition:

"The book is essential for game and learning designers alike as it blends learning principles, strategies and models with game elements, mechanics and dynamics in intuitive ways for achieving a balance between learning and fun while the player is striving to discover a meaningful purpose through playing." – Petros Lameras, Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Serious Games at Coventry University, UK.

"In his breathtaking book Educational Game Design Fundamentals, George Kalmpourtzis not simply presents a comprehensive how-to guide to designing and building world-class educational experiences, but rather weaves together a culmination of lessons and insights- both from years working within the industry to talking to some of the best and brightest minds pushing the frontiers on how humans continue to evolve and learn. This is a must read for anybody interested in taking part in one of the most exciting ventures of human ingenuity and evolution to date; one that stands to fundamentally change the nature of what it means to be a human being alive at the dawn of the 3rd millennium." – Ryan Gerber, User Experience Designer, Vive Virtual Reality.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: The Journey Begins, Chapter 1 Designing Learning Experiences, Chapter 2 The Magical Powers of the Game Designer, Chapter 3 Pedagogy and Games, Chapter 4 The Game Core, Chapter 5 Where to Start?, Chapter 6 Let’s Make a Game!, Chapter 7 A Closer Look at Game Mechanics, Chapter 8 Games as Reflection Tools, Chapter 9 Knowing Your Audience, Chapter 10 Story: A First Look, Chapter 11 Game Interfaces, Chapter 12 Game Aesthetics, Chapter 13 Testing and Feedback, Chapter 14 Documenting and Communicating, Chapter 15 The Final Chapter