April 2012 Volume 15 Number 2 - Educational Technology & Society

The main challenge in any learning activity, including games, is to retain the learners’ engagement in the activity
until they succeed (D’Mello, Chipman, & Graesser, 2007). The learner’s affective engagement in activities can give
rise to a sense of belonging, acceptance and identification with something or someone (Sharan & Tan, 2008).
Hypercontextualized games
An individual resides in her or his own real life but can also decide, at any given time, to access the play-space and
play a game while in this space. A game consists of game components, mechanics and dynamics. A game component
is any unit essential to the functioning of the game. The game mechanics consist of game states and rules that define
the allowed transitions. The game dynamics refer to all the possible ways in which the game mechanics are
actualized.
A Hypercontextualized Game (HCG) is a locally designed game system (Islas Sedano et al., 2010) which helps its
players to gain information about different subjects by using specific elements of the continuously changing context
in the game. The HCG design model explains how each game is the result of interweaving three different
perspectives: specific context elements (SCEs), subject matter information (SMI) and game system (GS). Each of
these perspectives is described below. In this paper, we use HCG to refer to the design approach as well as games
designed by following the said approach.
� Game System (GS) refers to the conceptualization of the core idea of the game. It takes advantage of the real life
atmosphere to support the immersion of the player in the game. GS focuses on supporting affective engagement
on-site.
� Subject Matter Information (SMI) determines the meaningful activities that the players can perform to co-create
knowledge according to a clear aim and the resources available. Therefore, SMI focuses on the intellectual and
pedagogical elements on-site.
� Specific Context Elements (SCEs) identify the potential game components in the specific context for which the
game is designed and in which it is being played. This perspective classifies the components according to the
environmental aspect of context (physical environment observable with our senses or instruments) and the
intersubjective aspects of context (circumstances that are related to the communication of an individual with
other individuals or with systems). Additionally, SCEs take into account the subjective aspects of context like
affections, thoughts, ideas, reflections and meanings.
The HCG stories of LieksaMyst exemplify the previous definitions:
� Game system stimulates the visitors’ imagination and transports them into the past giving life to the
exposition and involving them in the stories contained in each house.
� Subject Matter Information promotes the visitors’ reflection on historic Finnish lifestyles and adds to
their understanding of the historical value of the on-site objects.
� Specific Context Element makes use of the objects normally displayed in the museum’s exhibition
while respecting the museum’s atmosphere and rules.
The term hyperpercontextualized derives from the awareness that each game not only involves on-site contextual
elements (SCEs) in its nature (GS and SMI), but also presents a context tolerance and context depth. Context
tolerance refers to the flexibility of on-site contextual aspects that are in constant flux. The weather conditions or
social dynamics that bear down on the museum are examples of this. Context depth is the degree in which a game
involves the players in their context. Thus the term is a reminder of two aspects inherent to the games designed by it.
Firstly, the games are based on and aimed at a particular context, which may be very limited. Secondly, the prefix
hyper (from Greek υπερ, beyond) refers to the fact that HCG games are also tolerant in that they allow for
applications in situations other than the original one. The games may also be played by different players from those
who originally co-created them. The games thus move beyond the borders of the original conceptualization.
Digital games
Digital game titles are constantly increasing in the different genres that include adventure, fantasy and educational.
We can identify three types of digital game designs for four platforms (Table 1).
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