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The potential use of games for serious purposes is huge because a large and growing population is already engaged with playing entertainment games. However, only a tiny fraction of the overall playing time is devoted to games that are designed for learning or health impact. The challenge is to develop such games that have broad enough impact that transfers to a variety of tasks. Working memory is of central importance for acquiring knowledge and involved in a variety of complex cognitive tasks and thus the use of working memory training games can lead to a wide range of significant impacts in peoples’ life. The aim of this paper is to shed light on game design decisions that are founded on cognitive and neuropsychological theories, focusing especially on working memory training. We scrutinize the development of working memory game titled Brains vs Zombies that is designed to have transferrable impact on brain health and promote physical health in some level. The results of two small‐scale pilot studies in which the implementation of Brains vs Zombies tablet game were studied are reported. The paper focus especially on user interface solutions of the game comparing button and motion based solutions. The results indicated that the opinions about the user interface solutions varied, but children appreciated the motion based user interface more than older university students. Furthermore, the findings showed that meaningful game elements can be added to usually monotone brain training programs to engage users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Raising awareness of educational games and game-based learning is an important step for large-scale adoption of these new educational methods. Digital game-based learning provides unique opportunities to engage students in learning, which is especially important for subjects that students struggle with, such as mathematics. Therefore, the aim of the current paper was to evaluate the usefulness of a math game competition for engaging, assessing, and training rational numbers in students from different schools. In particular, we investigated whether playing a digital game would improve students' magnitude understanding of rational numbers and whether playing behavior can be used for assessment purposes. Finnish fourth (n = 59, Mage = 10.36) and sixth-graders (n = 105, Mage = 12.34) participated in a math game competition relying on intra-classroom cooperation and inter-classroom competition. The students played a digital rational number game called Semideus, which is founded on number line estimation task mechanics in which players have to estimate the spatial position of a target number on a number line with only its start and endpoint specified. In previous empirical studies, this task mechanic has been successfully used to assess and foster students number magnitude understanding in conventional nongame based settings. Consequently, students were allowed to play the game as much as they wanted during a three-week period in order to improve their rational number knowledge and were able to check the status of the competition online. As expected, sixth grade students performed more accurately than fourth grade students in the game-based rational number magnitude estimation tasks. Moreover, results indicated that students benefited significantly from participating in the math game competition with respect to rational number knowledge. Importantly, the Semideus game was particularly effective with students who started with less rational number knowledge. Overall, the study demonstrated that participation in a math game competition seems to be a useful and engaging approach to assess and support the development of students' rational number knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potential use of games for serious purposes is huge because a large and growing population is already  engaged with playing entertainment games. However, only a tiny fraction of the overall playing time is devoted to games  that are designed for learning or health impact. The challenge is to develop such games that have broad enough impact  that transfers to a variety of tasks. Working memory is of central importance for acquiring knowledge and involved in a  variety of complex cognitive tasks and thus the use of working memory training games can lead to a wide range of  significant impacts in peoples’ life. The aim of this paper is to shed light on game design decisions that are founded on  cognitive  and  neuropsychological  theories,  focusing  especially  on  working  memory  training.  We  scrutinize  the  development of working memory game titled Brains vs Zombies that is designed to have transferrable impact on brain  health and promote physical health in some level. The results of two small‐scale pilot studies in which the implementation  of Brains vs Zombies tablet game were studied are reported. The paper focus especially on user interface solutions of the  game comparing button and motion based solutions. The results indicated that the opinions about the user interface  solutions  varied,  but  children  appreciated  the  motion  based  user  interface  more  than  older  university  students.  Furthermore, the findings showed that meaningful game elements can be added to usually monotone brain training  programs to engage users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]