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Success factors for serious games to enhance learning: a systematic review

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Abstract

There is no doubt that an abundance of factors exists that makes learning with serious games successful. Research articles reporting on these factors, however, tend to focus on select serious game elements and do not combine all salient factors for successful learning with serious games. Addressing this gap is a necessity for the success of serious games and may even alleviate long-standing debates about pedagogy over enjoyment, how much realism is enough or whether artificial intelligence is worth the cost. This article examines existing academic literature from 2000 to 2015, extracting shared serious game success factors that have had an encouraging impact on gameful learning experiences. As such, we subsequently aim to withdraw the field from a perpetual spiral of does-my-game-work research toward more worthwhile why-does-my-game-not-work research. Qualitative content analysis through the constant comparison method (CCM) analyzed a total of 63 articles from a variety of recognized electronic libraries and databases. Through this analysis, we reveal five central serious game themes: backstory and production; realism; artificial intelligence and adaptivity; interaction; and feedback and debriefing, all of which require deliberate intertwining with pedagogical content to ensure successful learning. This review unravels each of the five themes into their constituent factors and consequently presents the factors as practical guidelines that serious games producers should strive to include in their game productions. Applying these recommendations whenever serious games are considered will provide a foundation for effective gameful learning experiences.

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Acknowledgments

This work is based on research support, in part, by the National Research Foundation of South Africa. Any opinion, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors, and therefore, the NRF does accept any liability in regard thereto. We also wish to acknowledge the effort of the librarians of the North-West University.

Author contributions

All authors contributed to this article, in content and in form. WSR and ASB wrote the manuscript. VL assisted the mechanics of the systematic literature review. AW assisted with inter-reliability and quality assurance. All authors contributed equally to the editing of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. TELIT-SA, Faculty of Economic Sciences and IT, North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, Hendrik van Eck Boulevard, Vanderbijlpark, 1911, South Africa

    Werner Siegfried Ravyse, A. Seugnet Blignaut & Verona Leendertz

  2. Serious Games Institute, Coventry University, Priory St, Coventry, CV1 5FB, UK

    Alex Woolner

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  1. Werner Siegfried Ravyse
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  2. A. Seugnet Blignaut
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  3. Verona Leendertz
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  4. Alex Woolner
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Correspondence to Werner Siegfried Ravyse.

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Ravyse, W.S., Seugnet Blignaut, A., Leendertz, V. et al. Success factors for serious games to enhance learning: a systematic review. Virtual Reality 21, 31–58 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-016-0298-4

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