A Review of the Use of Video Games for Purposes Besides Entertainment: A Case for a Novel Approach for Teaching Assembly Language

Assembly language is a technical skill required in several engineering degrees and technology areas. Nonetheless, these skills are often dubbed hard to learn by students due to the complexity of the internal hardware of a microprocessor. It is currently stated that new ways of teaching assembly language are welcomed. We believe that a video game could be an effective tool for teaching assembly as recent research has proved the benefit of using video games for purposes besides entertainment, specifically for developing problem-solving capabilities and learning practical skills. In addition, there are commercially successful entertainment-focused video games that use pseudo-assembly instruction for puzzle solving in the game dynamic. However, we could not identify a video game designed to teach the assembly language of real computer architectures. In this paper, we review the use of video games for purposes besides entertainment and make a case for the value of creating a specialized video game that teaches modern x86 assembly language to college students. We also present some in-game dynamics that use assembly language concepts and propose an evaluation method to check the efficacy of a video game created with this specific goal.