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Abstract: Currently 'game-based learning' is one of many promising approaches in education. Despite constant discussions of the benefits and negative effects of videogames, their leverage in school is becoming commonplace. One of the most promising videogame genres in terms of the breadth of learning goals and overall complexity is the massively multiplayer on-line role-playing game. In this paper, an example of designing a Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMO) with learning goals in the STEM area is presented. The game "Allotrop:Reaction" (under construction) combines "shooter", "crafting" and "game economy" and contains model engineering and science investigation tasks based on selected physics and chemistry concepts from 7th-8th grade Russian school curricula (13-14 year-old children).
Keywords: educational MMO development, serious games, game based learning
A modern school student is an experienced consumer of digital entertainment as an essential part of his/her leisure pursuits (TV, all types of media, video games etc.). At the same time, videogames are leaders in the desperate struggle for leisure time (ESA, 2014). Furthermore, contemporary school education (particularly in the USA) does not avoid leveraging these tools within the learning process. Some surveys distinctly highlight a common trend where videogames are an increasingly popular and even routine instrument for teacher instruction, e.g. 'nearly three-quarters (74%) of K-8 teachers report using digital games for instruction', '55% say [their students play] at least weekly', teachers also say they are using games to deliver content mandated by local and state/national curriculum standards (Takeuchi, 2014).
Evidently, on-going debates among professionals in Education, Psychology, Sociology, Healthcare etc. are far from reaching a final answer for whether videogames' negative effects overlap (or diminish) their positive ones, and, hence, it is/is not yet worth the risk of using them for prosocial activities such as learning (e.g. Groves et al, 2017; Granic et al, 2014; Prot et al, 2014). Considering the aforementioned debates, we as educational practitioners and EdTech developers have a responsibility to be prudent in terms of choosing the genre, ideas, environments, and mechanics, etc., of the games we utilize for reaching desirable learning goals so as...