Designing mobile gaming narratives for guided discovery learning in interactive environments

Abstract

The research question of this paper is "How to build a narrative-centered interactive environment for mobile game learning"? It attempts to achieve two purposes: first, to provide suggestions for designing mobile games in interactive environments and second, to explore the possible learning outcomes from mobile gaming. The research method used is textual analysis of the case "Façade", an interactive environmental adventure game. The findings suggest that the flow chart, the hidden story and the braided plot are the best suited narrative texts for adventure games to guide learners in narrative-centered environments. Moreover, the possible learning outcomes from mobile adventure games could be guided discovery learning. In conclusion, this study suggests that in mobile adventure game design, teachers should consider which location is an important node that every learner has to go through. In each node, teachers should provide some choices, including wrong ones. Teachers also need to consider different possible ending scenarios according to learners` self-construction. Finally, teachers have to explain why different learners have different results. Further studies can also apply the theories mentioned above on stories of different genres to design different adventure games for various purposes.