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Evidence of Educational Game Design

A well-designed game produces measurable learning gains. That is more useful than the broad claim that games teach, because it points at where the gain comes from: the design. The evidence below names the design decisions one at a time, with the studies behind each.

By Ilija Bojović, Founder / Lead game designer

Contents
Four young adults play a tile-laying board game around a wooden table.

This is the hub of a five-part series. It gives the whole argument in about two minutes. Each section below links to a longer piece that goes into the evidence properly, with its own references.

Design decides the gain

An ordinary educational game gives six in ten learners an edge over old-style teaching. A well-designed simulation gives eight in ten, and nearly nine in ten for hands-on technical skill. That gap is the finding this series is built on: the outcome depends on decisions a designer makes, and every section below names one.

What the data shows

Every figure below is taken from the meta-analysis it cites.

What we looked at What it means
Educational games vs. ordinary teaching About 63% of learners come out ahead
Simulation-based training 80 to 85% of learners come out ahead
Motivation, on its own No proven boost. Playing a game doesn’t reliably make someone more motivated to learn
A structured debrief after the exercise Performance rises by 20 to 25%

How much better learners do, by teaching method

Effect sizes 0.33, 0.85 and 1.06; see How large is a learning game’s effect, really?

Three bars showing how many learners do better than under the old way of teaching. Educational games in general: about 63% do better. Simulation-based training: about 80% do better overall, rising to about 85% for hands-on technical skill.

Seven design decisions

Everything the evidence supports reduces to seven design decisions.

Learning drives progression

What a learner must do to advance is the most consequential decision in the whole design. Argued in Four design decisions that make a game teach.

Feedback carries the loop

The content of feedback decides whether it works. In Four design decisions that make a game teach, and in What happens after a learning game ends, since a debrief is feedback at a larger scale.

Difficulty matched to the learner

Difficulty that slows acquisition can improve retention, and the kind that does is difficulty the learner can work through. Also in Four design decisions that make a game teach.

Practice is spaced

Of all common study techniques, only two are reliably effective: testing yourself, and spacing practice over time. Games do both natively. In Four design decisions that make a game teach.

Every format has a task it suits

Task fit predicts whether training works; hardware and game elements matter through it. Set out in full, format by format, in Choosing the right format for a learning game.

Discussion consolidates it

Structured debriefing adds a substantial performance gain on its own. Covered in What happens after a learning game ends.

Testing decides

Playtesting is formative evaluation under a different name, and it has to run while the design can still change. The full case is in How to tell whether a game teaches.

What a proposal can claim

Each of these holds up with an evaluator, because each is stated the way the evidence supports it.

Motivation is a design outcome, and testing shows whether it landed.

Wouters found the learning effect and the motivation result in the same review, which is why the second is something to build and demonstrate rather than assume.

Every format teaches when it fits the task.

Howard’s moderator analysis puts the outcome on task-technology fit, which is a claim any format can make once the fit is shown.

Desktop and headset both work, each for the tasks it suits.

Outcomes track the task rather than the device, so the scenario can be designed for the hardware the project uses.

Adult learners bring prior knowledge, and adult studies are the ones to cite for them.

Populations differ, and a proposal that names its population is one an evaluator can trust.

Procedural skills transfer when the game rehearses the actual procedure.

Jongbloed found transfer from extended reality practice to physical performance.

References

The full list for this series. Individual articles cite only what they use; this page carries all of it.

Next in the series

How large is a learning game’s effect, really?

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