The potential of games, whether they are designed to be educational or not,
always relates to their capability for engaging players. Key proponents of digital
GBL, Quinn and Connor (2005) claim that the elements of learning and engagement
of games ‘can be aligned to create a synergy that can be exploited to systematically
design compelling learning experiences’ (p.2). To ‘engage’ means to attach by
pleasing qualities; to attract, charm or fascinate (Oxford English Dictionary 1989).
Prensky (2007) identifies twelve characteristics of games and their inherent engaging
elements, which suggest that games give us enjoyment and pleasure, intense and
passionate involvement, structure, motivation, doing, learning, flow, ego gratification,
adrenaline, social groups, emotion and spark our creativity. In game playing, there is
in the literature a state called “flow” that represents the condition of an engaged
player. Csíkszentmihályi (1996) defines flow as the mental state of operation in which
the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energised
focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. Although
academics do use the term in educational context (Claxton 2002), engagement is
treated as a scale rather than a state in academia. For example, O’Brien and Toms
(2008) define engagement as the ability of a computer application to initiate and
sustain users’ attention and interest over a period of time by providing adequate levels
of aesthetic and sensory appeal, feedback, challenge, control, novelty, customisation,
and motivation.