Collectible Content – Towards a Modular Ecosystem of Intrinsically Integrated Gameplay: The Case of Fractions

Designing a good game is hard. Designing a learning game might be even harder as it requires engaging game elements to be aligned with the respective learning content. However, when this alignment is successful—referred to as intrinsic integration—games become effective tools for learning. In this article, the idea of collectible content is introduced as one way to achieve or make more pervasive use of intrinsic integration to support learning. Similar to an in-game currency system, learning content may be incorporated as in-game collectibles whose collection and manipulation are central aspects of gameplay. To substantiate the beneficial effects of collectible content, it is repeatedly presented, explored, and analyzed through various gameplay tasks. Through its characteristics of duality, consistency, and uniqueness/uniformity, collectible content evolves and adapts offering continuous opportunities for the development of conceptual understanding of the respective content—along with practice of procedures and acquisition of fact knowledge for the tasks at hand. To illustrate the idea and highlight affordances and potential impact of intrinsic integration, we present a prototype design of a fraction learning game to showcase a modular ecosystem focused on collectible content gameplay.