Dickey, M.D. (2005) âEngaging by design: How engagement strategies in popular computer and video games can inform instructional designâ, Educational Technology Research and Development, 53, pp. 67â83. (https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02504866)
Dickey breaks down why mainstream games hold attention so well, and argues that those same engagement tactics can be borrowed for instructional design.
The paper highlights how games position the learner inside a role, then keep them moving through problems, feedback, and a sense of progress. It points to things like point-of-view/player positioning, narrative framing, and interactive design choices that encourage participation rather than passive reception. What I like here is the focus on learning as something embedded in context: youâre not just told information, youâre pushed to act, interpret, and adjust based on consequences.
Even though the examples are from 2005 and feel dated in terms of technology, the underlying principles still map onto newer immersive and AI-driven systems. It gives me a useful checklist for thinking about how to design âengagementâ without relying on novelty alone.
Farina, A. (2025) Visual semiotics and digital game spaces: review of the semiotics of architecture in video games. Semiotica, Vol. 2025 (Issue 264), pp. 195-200.( https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2024-0086)
Farina reviews Gabriele Aroniâs work on the semiotics of architecture in video games, treating game environments as sign systems rather than neutral background decoration.
A key point is that virtual architecture doesnât just âlookâ a certain way it communicates function and values. Farina draws on Ecoâs idea of denotation/connotation to argue that spaces signal what they are for (paths, barriers, entrances) while also suggesting ideology and mood, especially since game worlds are fully designed and nothing is accidental. The review also stresses movement and âanticipatory playâ: routes, thresholds, landmarks, lighting, and materials act like clues that guide players before any dialogue explains whatâs going on. Aroniâs case studies range across genres, including Assassinâs Creed II, Final Fantasy XV, and NaissanceE.
For my own practice, this sharpens how I read level design as meaning-making: what a space teaches through layout, rhythm, and constraint. Itâs a review, not a deep artefact analysis, but the vocabulary feels immediately usable.
Grennan, S. and Hague, I. (2018) âMedium, knowledge, structure: capacities for choice and the contradiction of medium-specificity in games and comicsâ, Image & Narrative, 19(1), pp. 74â86. (https://www.imageandnarrative.be/index.php/imagenarrative/article/view/1765)Â
Grennan and Hague look at how âchoiceâ works across games and comics, and use that to question strict ideas of medium-specificity.
The paper compares Chris Wareâs Building Stories with open-world RPGs like ** Fallout: New Vegas and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim**. Their key point is that Building Stories lets you choose the order of reading/presentation, but it doesnât let you change the order of events in the same way the games do (and they also mention other non-game texts like Saportaâs Composition No. 1 when thinking about event order). They build the discussion using narrative theory (including Chatman, plus game/text theory like Frasca and Aarseth) to argue that âchoiceâ is a structural issue, not a simple badge that only games have.
I find this useful because it pushes me to think about interactivity as structure (what kinds of choices exist, and what they actually change) rather than treating âgames vs comicsâ as totally separate categories. It also helps me frame my own practice around designed constraints -what choices Iâm giving the player/viewer, and whether those choices affect events or only the order theyâre encountered.
Han, Y., & Ho, X. (2024). âMore Than Just Playing a Characterâ: Gender Exploration and Expression in Avatar Customization. Games and Culture, 0(0). (https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120241307982)
Han and Ho argue that avatar customisation isnât just a cosmetic menu: it can become a space where players test, express, and negotiate gender.
They base the study on semi-structured interviews with 20 players across different countries who described a range of gender identities. The authors identify three recurring patterns: conforming to or deliberately bending gender norms, building an avatar that symbolises aspects of the self, and experimenting with identities that might feel risky or unavailable offline. What stuck with me is how players keep finding ways around âbinaryâ systems by mixing cues and pushing limited options creatively.
For my own writing and practice, it gives me language for talking about representation as something players actively do, not only something a game passively shows. The sample is small and self-reported, so it canât claim universality, but itâs still a strong fit for this moduleâs politics/identity angle.
Lee, L.-K., Wei, X., Chui, K. T., Cheung, S. K. S., Wang, F. L., Fung, Y.-C., Lu, A., Hui, Y. K., Hao, T., U, L. H., & Wu, N.-I. (2024). A Systematic Review of the Design of Serious Games for Innovative Learning: Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, or Mixed Reality? Electronics, 13(5), 890. (https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13050890)Â
Lee and colleagues map how serious games are being designed for âinnovative learningâ across AR, VR, and MR, and what design patterns keep repeating in the research.
They follow a PRISMA-style systematic review process and synthesise a large body of studies (they report 273 relevant papers). Instead of treating immersive tech as a single category, they compare how different modalities are used, what interaction techniques show up, and how projects are evaluated. The review reads like a toolbox: it pulls together frameworks, design elements, and common evaluation approaches, but it doesnât always push hard on which choices work better and why.
What Iâm taking from it is mainly orientation. It gives me a practical way to justify design decisions in an immersive learning prototype, while reminding me Iâll still need to add my own critical lens around context, culture, and what âlearning outcomesâ actually mean.
Paredes-Olea, M. (2009) Procedural realism in computer strategy games. MA thesis. University of Alberta.(https://doi.org/10.7939/R3G98B)
Paredes-Olea argues that ârealismâ in strategy games isnât mainly about convincing graphics, but about how the gameâs procedures make the world behave over time.
Using computer strategy games (including Age of Empires III) as touchpoints, the thesis develops âprocedural realismâ through system-focused game theory, drawing on writers like Bogost and Galloway. The attention stays on mechanics and interfaces: tech trees, resource loops, unit rules, and feedback that quietly teach the player what âprogressâ looks like and which kinds of power feel normal inside the simulation. Repetition matters here by playing, you learn the modelâs cause-and-effect logic.
This shifted my own view of realism from representation to operation. Instead of asking whether a game depicts history accurately, Iâm pushed to ask what its systems assume about history. Itâs dense in places, but itâs a strong way to read mechanics as cultural arguments.
Petra Jääskeläinen and Cecilia Ă
sberg. 2024. Whatâs the Look of "Negative Gender" and âMax Ethnicityâ in AI-Generated Images? A Critical Visual Analysis of the Intersectional Politics of Portrayal. In Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 570, 1â9. (https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3644057Â )
Jääskeläinen and Ă
sberg explore what âneutralâ actually looks like in AI image generation by testing prompt settings like ânegative genderâ and âmax ethnicityâ, and then reading the outputs as political images rather than technical results.
Working with tools such as ArtBreeder and Midjourney, they show how the interface and prompt logic can steer users into familiar visual stereotypes: removing gender markers doesnât produce an empty category, and pushing ethnicity to the maximum can amplify racialised cues instead of offering nuance. Their point is that bias isnât only âin the datasetâ it also sits in defaults, sliders, and the way the system invites you to describe bodies and identities.
This matters to my AI-assisted workflow because itâs a reminder that prompts and constraints are design decisions with cultural consequences. It makes me want to test outputs more critically, document patterns, and add guardrails when I use generated imagery.
Rodriguez-Garcia, B., RamĂrez-Sanz, J. M., Miguel-Alonso, I., & Bustillo, A. (2024). Enhancing Learning of 3D Model Unwrapping through Virtual Reality Serious Game: Design and Usability Validation. Electronics, 13(10), 1972. (https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics13101972)
This paper presents a VR serious game built to teach UV unwrapping, treating it as a skill thatâs hard to grasp through demos alone.
Their game, Unwrap 3D Virtual: Ready (UVR), is organised into four levels that ramp up complexity and uses animation plus gamification, explicitly tied to Mayerâs Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning. They validate it with 53 students, grouping participants by device (PC vs VR) and by prior VR experience (low/mid/high). The evaluation leans toward usability and user-behaviour patterns rather than long-term skill transfer.
For my own 3D workflow learning, the main takeaway is how much easier âtechnicalâ knowledge becomes when the interface shows causality and allows safe repetition. Iâd treat it as strong design evidence, but not final proof of durable learning outcomes.
Taheri, M., Cyma-Wejchenig, M., Gomes, L. and Tan, K. (2026) âAdaptive historical education through generative AI and immersive game designâ, in Arai, K. (ed.) Proceedings of the Future Technologies Conference (FTC) 2025, Volume 1. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol. 1675. Cham: Springer. (https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-07986-2_6)Â
Taheri and colleagues outline how generative AI could support adaptive history learning inside an immersive game, where the content shifts in response to a playerâs choices and progress.
They propose a framework that mixes AI-driven narrative generation with interactive environments so that history is experienced through action (exploring, deciding, dealing with consequences) rather than only being âtoldâ. The interesting part for me is the focus on the system: the game is treated as a learning process that can personalise scenarios, pacing, and feedback, instead of delivering one fixed storyline to everyone.
This connects with our class discussions about learning through simulation and agency, but I also felt the paper is still early-stage. It reads more like a concept/prototype than a long-term study, so the evidence for learning outcomes is limited. Even so, it helped me think about what guardrails youâd need to balance accuracy with engagement when AI is generating or reshaping historical material.
Zhang, Y. and Li, S. (2023) âTexts to games: Tracing intertextuality, intermediality and intermateriality in Chinese cultivation games and novelsâ, Journal of Games, Virtual Worlds and Social Reality, 5(1), pp. 1â18. (https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/jgvw_00101_1)
Yu Hao traces how Chinese âcultivationâ games develop out of web novels, mythic traditions and fan culture, rather than appearing as standalone game texts.
Using examples like Jade Dynasty and The Legend of Sword and Fairy, the article shows how these games lean on players already recognising cultivation tropes power-up hierarchies, archetypal roles and genre expectations, so the world makes sense through familiarity. Hao frames this through a movement from intertextuality (shared story patterns) to intermediality (novels, games and other formats feeding each other) and then to intermateriality, where distribution, technology and commercial systems shape what stories can travel and how.
What stuck with me is the idea that recognition can act like a design shortcut: you donât always need to explain everything if the audience brings the genre knowledge with them. Even though itâs very grounded in Chinese contexts, it gives me a better way to think about games as ecosystems, not isolated works.