Insights into Design of Educational Games: Comparative Analysis of Design Models

The study reports on an ongoing research that intends to identify and validate the core dimensions for Game-Based-Learning (GBL) and further explore the shift in dimensional focus between different phases of educational game development life cycle: pre-production (design), production (development) and post-production (testing and maintenance). Hence, this paper presents the initial work focusing on design phase by presenting a comparative analysis of educational game design models using GBL attributes, validity and framework attributes as analytical lens. The main objective is to analyze the fundamental GBL attributes in existing design models to identify the common attributes which demonstrate their importance for design phase and highlight any need for further research in terms of attribute validation and framework improvement. This study also highlights the strengths and weakness of existing design frameworks. The results of analysis underline learning/pedagogical aspects and game factors as the most essential attributes for design phase of educational games. Comparative analysis also guides researchers/practitioners to better understand GBL through various properties of different existing design models and highlights the open problems such as lack of tool support, empirical validation, independent evaluations, adaptability and absence of concrete guidance for application to make more informed judgments