Digital games: exploring the relationship between motivation, engagement and informal learning

It has been suggested that digital games can be powerful learning environments that encourage active and critical learning, including participation within “affinity groups” and “semiotic domains” (Gee, 2004). However, there is a need to provide further empirical evidence to substantiate these claims, while there is little research that attempts to explore the links between motivation, engagement and informal learning. This paper reports on work in progress which aims to explore theses links through three different studies of adult games players. The first study examines a series of email interviews to find out more about people’s game-playing experiences; the second consists of a set of eight case studies examining how involvement and learning come together in and around instances of game-play; and the third includes a survey, to find out how prevalent certain game-playing activities are amongst different kinds of players. Furthering our understanding of how motivation, engagement and learning relate to each other within commercially available digital games will have important implications for the design of more formal educational environments.