Discovering Educational Game Design Through Conversation Starters: Teachers' and Game Designers' Perspectives

This study examines what makes educational games (EGs) educational by bringing together six Australian primary school teachers and six game designers in conversation-starter workshops. Analyzed through thematic coding in NVivo and grounded in Dewey's theory of experience and constructivism, the research explores both the features participants regard as essential and the barriers, design challenges, and classroom pains and gains that shape how these games are built and used. The scope is deliberately narrow, centered on primary education in Australia, and the small sample means the findings are descriptive and qualitative rather than statistically generalizable.

Across both groups, participants converge on a shared set of essential features: a clear learning goal, curriculum alignment, a balance between fun and content, relevance to what learners already know, scaffolding, progress tracking, and instant feedback. Game designers stress that clear intentions must guide players, while teachers emphasize adaptability and multi-platform engagement. Both groups identify persistent barriers, including poor fit between game levels and learners' developmental stages, difficulty accommodating varied student abilities, limited ICT resources, and insufficient budgets and playtesting time.

The central conclusion is that the gap between design and classroom practice stems largely from missing collaboration. Teachers frequently reinvent and adapt games after release, and time is lost selecting titles that poorly match curricula. Early teacher involvement in design is therefore presented as a promising route to better educational outcomes, with costly testing and limited designer-teacher communication identified as key contributors to ineffective "bad design." Concerns about inclusive design and about verifying educational purpose also surface, though these remain largely unquantified.