Just came across an interesting article that investigates the effects of game play on the experience of learning a skill (programming, in this study). There are a lot of comments plastered all over the internet, including some of my own, about the potential of games to increase motivation, but how this actually works in practice is unclear. This study attempts to make a start on describing the effects of gaming on the learning experience.

Here is the abstract: Learning to program is difficult for novices, even for those undergraduates who have majored in computer science. The study described in this paper has investigated the effects of game strategy and preference-matching on novice learners’ flow experience and performance in learning to program using an experiential gaming activity. One hundred and fifteen novices participated in the experimental activity. Two types of game strategy were employed: the matching-challenging strategy and the challenging strategy. Participants were categorised into one or other of the two groups based on individual preferences. The results of the study showed that: (1) the challenging group had higher flow experiences than the matching-challenging group; (2) participants’ performance was enhanced with the use of the matching strategy; and (3) a compensation effect existed among the preference-mismatched learners who performed better in the challenging game-play.