Play to Learn: from Serious Games to just Games

Abstract

Games have been used for a few decades in research, formal education, and training of children and adults, and digital games are no strangers to educational uses. After all, everyone likes to play games, so it should stand to reason that educational digital games are going to be a hit. Unfortunately, this is not the case. In fact, educational digital games are often criticized for being too focused on educational content and not enough on engaging, challenging, and entertaining players. Making games for entertainment is difficult and requires multidisciplinary expertise. Making educational games that are engaging and entertaining is also difficult and requires additional input from educators and domain experts, and rigorous evaluation methodologies, all of which must revolve around the players. In this position article, we introduce the early stage "EduGames: Play to Learn"research project aimed at supporting the public in acquiring Critical and Computational Thinking skills to tackle the problem of detecting misinformation, and supporting the game development and research communities in creating and evaluating games that are entertaining and educational. As part of this project, we call for more, and more structured, synergy between academia, educators, and the game development industry.