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Patterns of Game Playing Behavior as Indicators of Mastery

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Assessment in Game-Based Learning

Abstract

Every game is a serious one, i.e., every game is appropriate for some learning. How it works and what is learned depends on the context of game playing. Assuming suitable formalizations, there are patterns of game playing behavior. In digital games that are difficult to play, certain occurrences of instances of patterns are indicators of the human player’s mastery or, vice versa, failure. Logically represented pattern concepts set the stage for formal reasoning about characteristics of human game playing experiences and even for automatically learning patterns from instances.

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Acknowledgements

Particular thanks go to Anja Hawlitschek for her work on the game “1961” and for providing the database of her evaluation and to Christian Woelfert for implementing the touch screen version of the author’s little game “Gorge.” The present work has been partially supported by the Thuringian Ministry for Education, Science and Culture (TMBWK) within the project iCycle under contract PE-004-2-1.

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Correspondence to Klaus P. Jantke .

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Jantke, K.P. (2012). Patterns of Game Playing Behavior as Indicators of Mastery. In: Ifenthaler, D., Eseryel, D., Ge, X. (eds) Assessment in Game-Based Learning. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3546-4_6

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