Game-based learning is a field of research

Research

Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...

 and game design

Game design

Game design, a subset of game development, is the process of designing the content and rules of a game in the pre-production stage and design of gameplay, environment, storyline, and characters during production stage. The term is also used to describe both the game design embodied in a game as...

 based on observations that play

Play (activity)

Play is a term employed in ethology and psychology to describe to a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment...

, structured or unstructured, conditions the human brain

Human brain

The human brain has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times larger than the brain of a typical mammal with an equivalent body size. Estimates for the number of neurons in the human brain range from 80 to 120 billion...

 for transformation and learning. Increasingly it is seen as a part of the broader field serious games.

Origins

In his classical essay, "Upon the Aesthetic Education of Man", Friedrich Schiller

Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...

 discusses play as a force of civilization, which helps humans exit their animal conditions and aspire to become members of enlightened communities. He states that "humans are only fully human when they play". While the text is limited by the author's beliefs in concepts such as freedom and beauty, it nevertheless sets the stage for Johan Huizinga

Johan Huizinga

Johan Huizinga , was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history.-Life:Born in Groningen as the son of Dirk Huizinga, a professor of physiology, and Jacoba Tonkens, who died two years after his birth, he started out as a student of Indo-Germanic languages, earning his...

's classical study, Homo Ludens.

Further reading

• What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). ISBN 978-1403961693