Bridging Emotional Design and Serious Games: Towards Affective Learning Design Patterns

It is no secret that learning is a complex set of processes. Researchers and practitioners have been tackling the problem of learners' engagement, motivation, and retention from various perspectives, from pedagogical to cognitive and psychological. Nowadays, learning has become increasingly ubiquitous in multimedia spaces. The use of games in pedagogical practices, known as game-based learning, is one approach that has attracted attention in recent years. There is still much to determine whether and how games affect the learner's cognitive process and stimulate educational gains, besides some findings of positive outcomes of such practices. Recently, some elements were included in the mix of learning variables: emotions and affective interactions. The learners' emotion and cognition are intertwined, and thus influences learning outcomes either positively or negatively; even though this gap between affect, cognition, and pedagogy is narrowing, many conceptual backgrounds could be integrated into a unified view of systematic learning, especially when using multimedia environments such as games. One model that has been proposed towards this unified contextualization is the Integrative Model of Emotion in Game-Based Learning (EmoGBL), which accounts for cognitive-affective processes and their interaction with learning content; it also provides insights into how a particular game element can interact with the learners' emotional and cognitive processes, particularly through game mechanics. However, there is still a gap in how exactly these elements can interact with the player in a way that can both inform designers and educators on how to design games with pedagogical focus (serious games), increasing learner's retention and motivation. This work intends to decrease the gap discussed between game mechanics, learning and affective outcomes. To do so, it proposes a collection of serious game design patterns and guidelines, by linking standard game genre classifications (such as adventure, role-playing, or action) and game mechanics found in the literature with affective appraisal processes related to learning, as well as pedagogical theories and educational practices.