Design requirements for educational serious games with focus on player enjoyment

Player enjoyment evaluation models allow developers to know the performance of a game in promoting player enjoyment. This kind of evaluation can only be done after the development and have been used to identify possible points for game improvement. Educational serious games are commonly presented to students by their teachers, directing them to play, instead of the students starting to play willingly. Thus, it is important that these games are able to promote players enjoyment, encouraging replayability and recommendation from players, potentially enhancing the games' educational effects. From the association of criteria found in GameFlow and EGameFlow models with design elements of digital games, this paper presents design requirements for the development with focus on players' enjoyment. These design requirements objectively present how elements can be implemented in educational serious games to enhance the achievement of criteria for player enjoyment found in those models. The design requirements were applied in the development a game, later evaluated using the GameFlow and EGameFlow models. The results revealed positive feedback in regards to player enjoyment, evidencing the effectiveness of the design requirements. Additionally, the results show that the design requirements are flexible enough to include criteria from other player enjoyment evaluation models.