Visual novels: An methodology guideline for pervasive educational games that favors discernment

Abstract

Current educational games vary in how they present content, how they evaluate recently learned topics, and how student-teacher interaction is mediated. And while some treat educational games as an extra tool, others as virtual environments for practice, and some others as a replacement of the teacher, the areas of knowledge these are best suited for are usually abstract and technical. We present a method adapted from Visual Novels (VN), a sub-genre of Adventure Games born in Japan, that makes use of attractive characters, narrative engagement, puzzles and other interactive features to maintain user interest while submerging players in complex stories. With this our approach we are able to teach theoretical topics through discernment in multiple game scenarios, increasing knowledge and maintaining entertainment value. We show our results from experiments with a VN for Smart Pads we developed with Participatory Design, discuss our findings, limitations and talk about our future work. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.