Instructional Objectives to Core-Gameplay: A Serious Game Design Technique Joshua Hall School of EECS QLD University of Technology Brisbane, Australia joshua.hall@qut.edu.au Peta Wyeth School of EECS QLD University of Technology Brisbane, Australia peta.wyeth@qut.edu.au Daniel Johnson School of EECS QLD University of Technology Brisbane, Australia dm.johnson@qut.edu.au ABSTRACT This paper explores a gap within serious game design research. That gap is the ambiguity surrounding the process of aligning the instructional objectives of serious games with their core-gameplay i.e. the moment-to-moment activity that is the core of player interaction. We propose a core-gameplay focused design framework that can work alongside existing, more broadly focused serious games design frameworks. The framework utilises an inquiry- based approach that allows the serious game designer to use key questions as a means of clearly connecting instructional objectives to core-gameplay. The paper describes the use of this design framework in the context of a small section of gameplay from an educational game currently in development. This demonstration of the framework demonstrates how instructional objectives can be embedded into a serious games core-gameplay. Author Keywords Game Design; Gameplay; Instructional Objectives; Human Computer Interaction; Serious Games. ACM Classification Keywords K.8.0. Personal Computing: General – games. K.3.1. Computers and Education: General. INTRODUCTION Designing educational games can be a complex and challenging endeavor. The challenge comes from finding a balance between achieving player engagement and meeting learning outcomes [31]. Failure in finding this balance can result in a game becoming “chocolate-dipped broccoli” [5] i.e. forcing the integration of educational tasks with game design in the hope that it can be awkwardly molded into an engaging experience. There are a number of educational game design frameworks that can assist with the design of educational games [2,6,13,30]. These frameworks offer various guidelines and structured processes to ensure developers make informed pedagogical decisions when creating educational games. The common theme with these frameworks is the importance of clearly defined learning objectives. Whilst these frameworks are useful in guiding the entire game design and development cycle, there exists a common gap with respect to the translation of high-level guidelines and criteria into practical game design elements. The gap appears with the design of gameplay – that is the challenges faced and actions performed to achieve the goals of a game [1]. More specifically the issue resides within the design of core-gameplay i.e. the moment-to-moment activity that is the core of player interaction. The core-gameplay should align with the learning content to ensure maximal learning and engagement [14]. However, there seems to be no clear guidance on how to systematically approach and produce good design decisions for the purposes of learning. There are some frameworks that have provided useful matrices designed to highlight similarities between learning outcomes and types of core-gameplay [3,11,13,26]. However, the connection between instructional objectives and core-gameplay design, i.e., how gameplay can be intentionally, systematically and methodically designed to meet the learning objective, remains ambiguous. A design framework is required that can work alongside existing educational game design frameworks, and provide additional support in guiding designers to create core- gameplay that is based on clearly defined instructional objectives. Using this framework can clearly identify how and why educational games will meet the desired learning outcomes. The potential of educational games is in its ability to illustrate educational content and harness motivational characteristics of the player. The framework presented provides a method for systematically aligning core-gameplay. This paper is a design exploration grounded in the field of game design, education and human-computer interaction. We outline techniques for designing core-gameplay and provide details on the process that links core-gameplay interactivity to specific instructional objectives. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from permissions@acm.org. CHI PLAY 2014, October 19–October 22, 2014, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. ACM 978-1-4503-2473-1/14/04...$15.00. http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2658537.2658696 121