Table 3 Mapping the elements of instructional design [30] to the instructional design affordances of serious games and game facets

Learners and learning processes

Games should be designed to be used. The design and use of serious games needs to align with learners’ needs, their capabilities, and their expectations. The focus should be on engineering compelling educational experiences.

Learning and performance contexts

Serious games should be:

1) Appraised as learning and performance contexts in and of themselves

2) Appraised in terms of their intended roles and impacts in the broader educational contexts in which they are used

3) Appraised in terms of their facilitation of learning transfer to practice contexts

Content structure and sequence

Serious games can extend the instructional design repertoire by adding facets and templates for the creative and deliberate use of simulation and make-believe, symbols and symbolic actions, game boundaries and rules, and attention to learning experiences.

Instructional strategies

Serious games can extend the instructional design repertoire by adding facets and templates for the creative and deliberate use of competition and conflict, chance and luck, physical and cognitive performance, tactics and strategies, and complexity and difficulty.

Media and delivery systems

Gaming media can extend the instructional design repertoire, both by association (such as using the label of “game” for motivational reasons) and for their direct affordances (such as the use of multiplayer virtual worlds).

Designers and design processes

Serious games can present constructive challenges to instructional design norms and practices as well as extending the instructional designers’ repertoire.