Incorporating Diegetic Elements to Increase Engagement in Games for Engineering Education

One of the difficulties in developing educational games is maintaining player engagement. This engagement is critical for games to provide effective learning experiences. One way to increase engagement in games is to limit interruptions during game play. In educational games, this can be accomplished by incorporating learning or problem-solving elements diegetically. Diegetic elements are those that are part of the game scene. With this in mind, a series of games for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education has been developed focusing on content in courses that are prerequisites to the engineering curriculum. These games cover topics in pre-calculus, calculus, physics, and chemistry and incorporate learning elements diegetically. This paper will focus on techniques for implementing learning components as diegetic elements in games to increase player engagement. Additionally, concrete examples will be provided to further elucidate these techniques.