SGDDEdu: um modelo de short game design document para jogos educacionais digitais curtos

Abstract

The use of games in education has become an increasingly present practice in contemporary society. The process of developing digital educational games can become complicated due to the long time it is usually intended in the preparation of the game, to the high financial costs and to the lack of pedagogical knowledge of the teams which usually do not have educators. Game Design is a game project that describes how the game should be, defining its mechanics and interactions between player and the virtual world of the game and how they can affect the game environment. In order, to document the design of a game, there is the Game Design Document (GDD), whose one of the main objectives, is to help in communication between the different production teams of a game. However, because it is a large document that brings in detail all the main elements for the production of a game, it is often difficult to consult and little used, especially if the focus is the elaboration of small games which are the majority of the digital educational games that exist. For these short games, which can often be worked out within in a few hours, there are the Short Game Design Document (SGDD), that will describe the elements of the game in a simplified way, whereas the game to be drawn from it is also a simple game. Because there are no documents specifying short digital educational games that meet the real pedagogical needs, both in playful and didactic terms, this dissertation proposes to elaborate a model of SGDD for short educational games: the SGDDEdu. The SGDDEdu specifies elements of art, sound, mechanics and game programming, as well as educational elements in accordance with the new National Curricular Common Base (BNCC) of Elementary School, so that there is a standardization and better categorization of educational games in line with the proposed pedagogical objectives and the skills and competences described in each level of education. This dissertation was developed from the state of the art on Digital Educational Games, Game Design, studying and analyzing some models of existing SGDDs and the BNCC of Elementary School in general, generating in SGDDEdu, which was elaborated by Reverse Engineering of an existing game. An Electronic Editor of SGDDEdu was implemented to be applied with six education professionals, through a group, requesting them to specify an educational game in the SGDDEdu template. It was later applied to these professionals an evaluation questionnaire of the proposal. From the results, we found that the SGDDEdu has relevance and facilitates the production of digital educational games, guiding the educator in the writing of the game specification document that best meet their real needs. All the survey participants were able to write a specification document of short digital educational games and they thought the experience was relevant. It has also been verified that the BNCC contributes to the digital educational games development from the definition and orientation of abilities that should be developed in the student when playing a digital educational game.