Game Elements-Attributes Model: A First Step Towards a Structured Comparison of Educational Games

The Game Elements-Attributes Model (GEAM) is presented as a structured foundation for comparing digital educational games (DEGs), addressing the absence of a systematic framework in the field and the limitations of Wilson et al.'s (2009) feature list, which lacked an underlying structure and any guarantee of completeness. The paper's central contribution is a model organized around core elements, including Player, Actions, Challenges, Goals, Rewards, Setting/World, and Structure, with attributes grouped beneath each element and mapped to the nine categories proposed by Bedwell et al. (2012).

The model was developed through a literature review drawing on the ACM Digital Library, Sage, and ScienceDirect, which screened 211 articles and identified ten existing game models. Seven of these were evaluated against two requirements: inclusion of Wilson's features and a categorical structure comparable to Bedwell et al.'s. The authors found that most existing models captured only a few of Wilson's features and lacked sufficient abstraction, with Amory's model judged bulky and overlapping and the MDA framework criticized for insufficient detail on mechanics and dynamics. Attribute identification relied on targeted searches of game classification and design literature, though the authors acknowledge that these searches were not exhaustive.

The authors argue that GEAM provides a structured vocabulary useful for gamification, game design, and game research, and position its attributes as a refinement of Wilson et al.'s earlier features. A notable observation is that roughly 80% of gamification-related attributes concern Rewards, suggesting an imbalance in how the field has conceptualized game elements. The paper does not report empirical validation of the model's effectiveness. Its conclusions are therefore provisional: it offers a conceptual foundation intended to support future research on which attribute combinations best support particular learning content, with the eventual goal of deriving general design guidelines for educational games.