Abstract
Serious games try to combine playing with learning. The article problematises the feasibility of such a link in digital worlds and discusses various didactic concepts of making digital games usable for learning and teaching. Based on an analysis of the learning of games, three didactic concepts of serious games are examined with regard to their didactic potentials: (1) the direct transfer of knowledge acquired in the game (no additional didacticisation), (2) didacticisation by embedding the game in a learning situation or (3) didacticisation by embedding learning tasks in a game. Results on the use of games in which learning tasks are embedded in a game world show that people tend to try to reduce the absorption of knowledge in an explicit learning mode in order to switch back to the game mode as quickly as possible. The consequences of this problem for the didactic conception of serious games are discussed.
