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Topic · Developmental and Educational Psychology

Educational Games and Gamification

Educational Games and Gamification is a research topic within Developmental and Educational Psychology. Science Explorer counts 36k research works in it since 1950. 10.0% of them reached the world's top 10% most cited for their field and year.

This cluster of papers explores the use of gamification, game-based learning, and digital games to enhance education and learning outcomes. It covers topics such as motivation, student engagement, intrinsic motivation, and the impact of gamification on health. The research delves into the effectiveness of various game elements in educational contexts and their influence on learning and instructional design.

  • Gamification
  • Game-Based Learning
  • Digital Games
  • Motivation
  • Educational Games
  • Serious Games
  • Learning Outcomes
  • Student Engagement
  • Intrinsic Motivation
  • Health Gamification
Research works
36k
fractional, since 1950
In the world top 10%
3.6k
per year above
Top-10% rate
10.0%
share of its works in the world top 10%
Growth, 2018-21 → 2022-25
+57%
the tick is no change
Largest producer
United States
24% of the 10 largest, 2022-now
Educational Games and Gamification

Which countries lead Educational Games and Gamification research?

By volume, the United States and Indonesia publish the most (1.9k and 1.6k works in 2022-now).

By volume, 2022-now

  1. 1 United States 1.9k works
  2. 2 Indonesia 1.6k works
  3. 3 China 854 works
  4. 4 Spain 570 works
  5. 5 Brazil 554 works
  6. 6 Germany 533 works
  7. 7 India 526 works
  8. 8 Malaysia 493 works
  9. 9 Türkiye 454 works
  10. 10 United Kingdom 432 works

How concentrated that is

The same countries as shares of everything the list above accounts for. A node where two countries do two thirds of the work and one spread evenly across twelve read alike as a ranking and not at all alike here.

United States: 23.9%Indonesia: 19.8%China: 10.9%Spain: 7.3%6 others listed: 38.1%24%largest
United States1,878 · 23.9%Indonesia1,555 · 19.8%China854 · 10.9%Spain570 · 7.3%6 others listed2,992 · 38.1%

Shares of the rows listed above, not of the whole node.

Which institutions lead Educational Games and Gamification research?

By volume in 2022-now, State University of Malang publishes the most Educational Games and Gamification research, followed by Universiti Teknologi MARA and Indonesia University of Education.

By volume, 2022-now

  1. 1 State University of MalangIndonesia 73 works
  2. 2 Universiti Teknologi MARAMalaysia 69 works
  3. 3 Indonesia University of EducationIndonesia 68 works
  4. 4 Binus UniversityIndonesia 67 works
  5. 5 Yogyakarta State UniversityIndonesia 65 works
  6. 6 State University of SemarangIndonesia 54 works
  7. 7 Centre National de la Recherche ScientifiqueFrance 48 works
  8. 8 Tecnológico de MonterreyMexico 46 works
  9. 9 National University of MalaysiaMalaysia 45 works
  10. 10 Sultan Idris Education UniversityMalaysia 44 works

Who are the leading researchers in Educational Games and Gamification?

The most-cited researchers publishing on Educational Games and Gamification include Elie A. Akl, JoAnn E. Manson and Florian Fischer.

  1. 1 Elie A. Akl Canada 313k citations
  2. 2 JoAnn E. Manson United States 263k citations
  3. 3 Florian Fischer Germany 257k citations
  4. 4 Ilya Sutskever Canada 219k citations
  5. 5 Holger Jens Schünemann Canada 214k citations
  6. 6 Demis Hassabis United Kingdom 199k citations
  7. 7 Jürgen Schmidhuber Switzerland 188k citations
  8. 8 Derek C. Angus United States 185k citations

Ranked by citations received across their whole record, among researchers with at least three works on this topic.

What are the most cited papers in Educational Games and Gamification?

The most cited paper in Educational Games and Gamification is "Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search" (David Lawrence Silver, Aja Huang, Chris J. Maddison et al., 2016), with 16,121 citations. Next come "Mastering the game of Go without human knowledge" (9,370) and "The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance." (9,052).

Most cited papers
#PaperReleasedCitations
1 Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search David Lawrence Silver, Aja Huang, Chris J. Maddison et al. · Nature 26 Jan 2016 16,121
2 Mastering the game of Go without human knowledge David Lawrence Silver, Julian Schrittwieser, Karen Simonyan et al. · Nature Oct 2017 9,370
3 The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf T. Krampe, Clemens Tesch‐Römer · Psychological Review Jul 1993 9,052
4 From game design elements to gamefulness Sebastian Deterding, Dan Dixon, Rilla Khaled et al. Conference paper 28 Sep 2011 8,256
5 What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy James Paul Gee · Education + Training Open access May 2004 6,681
All 99 most cited papers, with filters and sorting

Where is Educational Games and Gamification research done?

The largest centres of Educational Games and Gamification research in 2022-now are Jakarta (Indonesia), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Bandung (Indonesia) and Yogyakarta (Indonesia). Among places with at least 20 works in it, it is an unusually large share of all research in Vincennes, Durán and Toronto.

Largest cities, 2022-now

  1. 1 JakartaIndonesia 171 works
  2. 2 Kuala LumpurMalaysia 157 works
  3. 3 BandungIndonesia 144 works
  4. 4 YogyakartaIndonesia 122 works
  5. 5 BeijingChina 120 works
  6. 6 MalangIndonesia 116 works
  7. 7 SemarangIndonesia 105 works
  8. 8 São PauloBrazil 103 works
  9. 9 SurabayaIndonesia 101 works
  10. 10 TaipeiTaiwan 99 works

Where it is the local speciality

  1. VincennesUS · 20.0 works59×
  2. Durán39.6 works33×
  3. Toronto20.0 works24×
  4. Tai PoCN · 26.0 works13×
← less than its size predicts1×more →

Location quotient: how much more of its research is in Educational Games and Gamification than the world average.

See Educational Games and Gamification on the map

Where is the best place to study Educational Games and Gamification?

Among universities, judged by research, Education University of Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong and National Taiwan University of Science and Technology score highest, combining excellence, specialisation, size, growth and international reach. Research strength is one signal when choosing where to study; it does not measure teaching.

0%20%40%mean 30.59%fractional works in this field (log) →share of work in the world top 10% →Education University…University of Hong K…Chinese University o…National Taiwan Univ…
above the meannear itbelow it

One dot per university in the first ten of the table below, at the default weights. The upper left is the interesting corner: small places doing unusually strong work.

Excellenceshare of its work in the world top 10%, 2022-now and all time averaged
40%
Specialisationhow much of its work is in this field, counted up to 10× the world share
10%
Sizeits output in this field, on a log scale
30%
Growthoutput growth, counted from -20% to +20%
10%
Internationalshare of its work with a co-author abroad
10%
Each slider sets a weight; the share it gets of the score is beside it.
#UniversityScoreTop 10%SpecialisationWorksGrowth
1Education University of Hong KongChina 82.139.4%15.3×26 +256.0%
2University of Hong KongChina 81.935.9%3.1×34 +62.6%
3National Taiwan University of Science and TechnologyTaiwan 76.326.6%12.8×29 +146.0%
4Chinese University of Hong KongChina 69.634.7%2.2×19 +76.3%
5National Cheng Kung UniversityTaiwan 66.239.8%2.7×13 +119.6%
6Tampere UniversityFinland 63.816.9%8.6×31 +69.7%
7Central China Normal UniversityChina 63.127.2%8.8×26 +229.8%
8East China Normal UniversityChina 62.835.7%2.2×12 +178.1%
9National Yunlin University of Science and TechnologyTaiwan 61.230.6%11.0×12 +42.5%
10Universiti Sains MalaysiaMalaysia 60.019.1%4.1×32 +200.7%

Universities only. The score blends excellence (40%), size (30%), specialisation (10%), growth (10%), international reach (10%), 2022-now; growth compares 2018-21 with 2022-25 and counts up to +20%, since a jump from a small base is mostly noise.

Every institution in Educational Games and Gamification, country by country

Is Educational Games and Gamification research growing?

Output in 2022-2025 was 57% higher than in 2018-2021, peaking in 2025. The fastest-growing topics are Educational Games and Gamification.

still counting19801990200020102020
grewheldshrank

The same series as a ribbon: one cell per year, darker for more. The line above answers how much; this answers when.

Its share of all research

Growing output can still be a shrinking share: all of science grows. This is Educational Games and Gamification as a percentage of every work published that year, 0.066% in 2024.

still counting0.025%0.050%0.075%Educational Games and Gamification0.067% in 202519801990200020102020

Fractional works of Educational Games and Gamification over all fractional works that year. How the balance of science has shifted.

How much of it reaches the world top 10%

Year by year.

still counting5%10%15%Educational Games and Gamification10.0% in 2025200020102020

Of each year's works in it, the share that reached the world's 10% most cited for their field and year. A field is the world for its own topics, so there is no other line to hold it against.

Which topics inside it are moving

Growth and decline on one axis around a shared zero. Two lists side by side hide the thing that matters: whether the growth dwarfs the decline, or the other way round.

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