Abstract:

Serious games have stood out as a new pedagogical format capable of motivating students through interactive learning, proposing challenges that favor engagement and reversing the burnout phenomenon suffered by current education. However, the conceptualization and development of these games involve a double challenge: ensuring the transfer of knowledge and preserving entertainment for the players. The lack of standards in the conception of these games has led to the creation of different models, where the recreational aspects often prevail over the educational ones. This research has two objectives. On the one hand, to analyse the models in the literature to identify those educational elements that are key in designing serious games. On the other hand, to establish pedagogical guidelines that standardise the creation of educational video games.

To achieve the objectives, a systematic review is carried out following the PRISMA statement to identify existing models for creating serious games. Subsequently, a qualitative analysis of the selected models is carried out to extract the key elements that should be present when creating a pedagogical standard for the design of serious games. To this end, the key dimensions identified in the publications analyzed are synthesized and subsequently organized and classified according to the nature of their elements.

The results show that the categories with the most significant presence in the models in the literature coincide with those of the playful layer, compared to the low percentages of the elements related to the pedagogical experience. These data reiterate that most models provide ineffective guidelines for creating educational video games. To guarantee the effectiveness of serious games as an educational tool, the proposed guidelines are approached from three different points of view: the pedagogical content, the educational objectives, and the learning process.

In conclusion, this review underlines that there is still a latent imbalance between entertainment and learning in the models for designing serious games. It highlights the relevance of devoting efforts towards the homogenization of models for the design of educational video games, focusing on the pedagogical components and the communicative and game elements.

Keywords:

Serious games, educational videogames, game-based learning, technology, pedagogical guidelines.