Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design

Linh Do

College of Computing & Informatics

Software Engineering

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Frank Lee

Digital Media

Corey Arnold Co-Mentor

Unconscious Techniques in Designing Educational Games

Hardly a day goes by without intellectual advances in education technology. Recently, educators have taken advantage of this progress to adopt an approach called serious games to further engagement of learners via video games. Serious games are a subdivision of video games which serve a purpose beyond just pure entertainment. This research focuses on the possible combination of different methods to design video games to educate learners subconsciously without losing the fun and entertaining nature of video games. These techniques include unconscious learning, stealth teaching, and subliminal priming combined with some principles of game design, such as organic tutorials and graphic design. Several educational video games have been used in this case study: the genre of action video games, a model 3D virtual environment. Moreover, two educational games made by Entrepreneurial Game Studio will be evaluated based on these principles: a mixed-reality game on cybersecurity called Hacktion, and a mobile game experience that allows players to explore medieval science called The Age of Alchemy. This research demonstrates that players are more focused and motivated while playing educational games and can unconsciously obtain new information