Educational games are often described as a balancing act between the entertainment aspects of video games—be it the engagement, motivational, or immersive advantages of it—and the serious subject matter of teaching, learning, and assessment. Thus the key challenge of game-based learning is how the merging of these two aspects could assist in the knowledge retention and application of the subject matters within the real-world environment, especially in the realm of education. The chapter proposes a validation framework that can link elements of learning and assessment in a subject matter to play experience in educational games before those games are developed. The framework will allow game designers and developers to understand the cognitive processes of learning, not only in designing effective educational games, but also to comprehend the intricacies and connections between learning and principles of game design. This in turn enables game researchers to develop effective educational games which are pedagogically and ludologically sound.
DESCQA: An Automated Validation Framework for Synthetic Sky Catalogs
