The same, but different: The educational affordances of different gaming genres

Abstract

As research continues into the use of computer games for educational purposes, the differences between different gaming genres become increasingly more important. These differences, however, appear to have been largely overlooked by the academic community, potentially resulting in incomplete results when considered against computer gaming as a whole. This paper studies a selection of games from several different genres, assessing each one in its ability to fulfill a set of previously identified requirements for a good educational resource. The results of the investigation showed that there were indeed differences between the genres, allowing for some suggestions to be made regarding their use, as well as leaving room for some interesting future work. © 2008 IEEE.