SGDDEdu

A Model of Short Game Design Document for Digital Educational Games

Abstract

The use of games in education has become an increasingly present practice in contemporary society. For so-called "digital natives", learning through electronic games becomes more significant. Digital educational games are often seen as boring, non-motivational, that fail to bring in some essential elements that promote engagement, making the learning goal is not achieved either. Game Design is a game project. It describes how the game should be, defining its mechanics and interactions between player and the virtual world of the game and how they can affect the game environment. In order to document the design of a game, there is the Game Design Document (GDD), whose one of the main objectives, besides registration, is to help in communication between the different production teams of a game, allowing the game designer a broad view of that is being produced. However, because it is a large document that brings in detail all the main elements for the production of a game, it turns out to be little used, especially if the focus is the elaboration of small games, which are the majority of the digital educational games that exist. For these short games, which can often be worked out within a few hours, there are Short Game Design Document (SGDD). The SGDD, unlike GDD, will describe the elements of the game in a simplified way possible, whereas the game to be drawn from it is also a simple game. Thus, the proposal of this work is to elaborate a model of SGDD for educational games (the SGDDEdu), specifying elements of art, sound, mechanics and game programming, as well as educational elements in accordance with the new BNCC (National Curricular Common Base) of Elementary School, so that there is a standardization and better categorization of educational games aligned with the proposed pedagogical objectives and the skills and competences described in each level of education. This work will be developed from the study and analysis of some models of already existing SGDD and the BNCC of Elementary School in general, causing in SGDDEdu. The research will be applied with teachers and educators requesting that they specify an educational game in the SGDDEdu template. With this, we intend to verify if the SGDDEdu has relevance and if it facilitates in the production of digital educational games, providing the teaching and learning process through the games, as well as trying to identify how the NCCB can contribute in the development of educational games.

Keywords: Educational games, Game Design, SGDD, BNCC