Playability Design Patterns: An Approach to Facilitate the Design of Educational Video Games

Learning through play is currently an effective and attractive educational strategy. Recently, many educational video games have failed because methods of analysis have not been used to discuss playability level in a structured way. Ensuring a good player experience characterized by playability requires cooperation and collaboration between game designers and educators. To this end, the authors have proposed a new set of patterns to support educational video game design and analysis. These patterns aim to facilitate the development of educational video games, summarize the essential information and requirements needed to understand a particular problem and the proposed solution, and present the interrelationships between educational video game components and playability attributes.