Narrative Serious Game Mechanics (NSGM) - Insights into the narrative-pedagogical mechanism

Narratives are used to construct and deconstruct the time and space of events. In games, as in real life, narratives add layers of meaning and they engage players by enhancing or clarifying content. From an educational perspective, narratives are a semiotic conduit for evoking critical thinking skills and promoting knowledge discovery/acquisition. While narrative is central to Serious Games (SG), the relationships between gameplay, narrative and pedagogy in SG design remain unclear, and narrative's elemental influence on learning outcomes is not yet fully understood. This paper reports efforts to shed light on these issues by way of a purpose-processing methodology, the ultimate aim of which is to help map serious game design patterns and pedagogical practices. In the case of narrative, the intention is to establish whether Narrative Serious Game Mechanics (NSGM) provide players with opportunities for reasoning and reflective analysis that may even transcend the game-based learning environment.