ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the areas of serious games and gamification, especially with a focus on learning type, learning theories, underlying motivation, game mechanics, and player agency. The two domain’s characteristics are covered, along with their history. For serious games, three subcategories are covered: edutainment, commercial off-the-shelf games, and educational serious games. The key research discussions are laid out. These include learning outcomes, teacher role, assessment, and transfer, but also the qualities found in meta-studies that characterize superior serious games like active versus passive player agency, endogenous versus exogenous games, and intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation.
For gamification, the idealist and instrumentalist approach are covered, and their different focus on game element and game thinking are discussed along with the research evidence available for each school, for example the limitations of the PBL approach (points, badges, and leaderboards).
